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Title: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss
Creator(s): Herbermann, Charles George (1840-1916)
Print Basis: 1907-1913
Rights: From online edition Copyright 2003 by K. Knight, used by
permission
CCEL Subjects: All; Reference
LC Call no: BX841.C286
LC Subjects:
Christian Denominations
Roman Catholic Church
Dictionaries. Encyclopedias
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THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
AN INTERNATIONAL WORK OF REFERENCE
ON THE CONSTITUTION, DOCTRINE,
DISCIPLINE, AND HISTORY OF THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH
EDITED BY
CHARLES G. HERBERMANN, Ph.D., LL.D.
EDWARD A. PACE, Ph.D., D.D. CONDE B PALLEN, Ph.D., LL.D.
THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D. JOHN J. WYNNE, S.J.
ASSISTED BY NUMEROUS COLLABORATORS
IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES
VOLUME 12
Philip II to Reuss
New York: ROBERT APPLETON COMPANY
Imprimatur
JOHN M. FARLEY
ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK
__________________________________________________________________
Philip II
Philip II (Augustus)
King of France, born 22 or 25 August, 1165; died at Mantes, 14
July, 1223, son of Louis VII and Alix de Champagne.
He was saved from a serious illness after a pilgrimage made by
his father to the tomb of Thomas `a Becket; he succeeded to the
throne 18 September, 1180. His marriage with Isabella of
Hainault, niece of the Count of Flanders, the conflicts which he
afterwards sustained against the latter, and the deaths of the
Countess (1182) and Count of Flanders (1185), increased the
royal power in the north of France. His strife with Henry II of
England in concert with the sons of that monarch, Henry,
Richard, and John, resulted in 1189 in the Treaty of
Azay-sur-Cher, which enhanced the royal power in the centre of
France. The struggle with the Plantagenets was the ruling idea
of Philip II's whole policy. Richard Coeur de Lion having become
King of England, 6 July, 1189, was at first on amicable terms
with Philip. Together they undertook the Third Crusade, but
quarreled in Palestine, and on his return Philip II accused
Richard of having attempted to poison him. As Richard had
supported in Sicily the claims of Tancred of Lecce against those
of the Emperor Henry VI, the latter resolved to be avenged.
Richard, having been taken captive on his return from the
Crusade by the Duke of Austria, was delivered to Henry VI, who
held him prisoner. Philip II sent William, Archbishop of Reims,
to Henry VI to request that Richard should remain the captive of
Germany or that he should be delivered to Philip as his
prisoner. Without loss of time Philip reached an agreement with
John Lackland, Richard's brother. Normandy was delivered up by a
secret treaty and John acknowledged himself Philip's vassal.
But, when in February, 1194, Richard was set free by Henry VI,
John Lackland became reconciled with him and endless conflict
followed between Richard and Philip. On 13 January, 1199,
Innocent III imposed on them a truce of five years. Shortly
after this Richard died. Subsequently Philip defended against
John, Richard's successor, the claims of the young Arthur of
Brittany, and then those of Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La
Marche, whose betrothed had been abducted by John. The war
between Philip and John, interrupted by the truces imposed by
the papal legates, became a national war; and in 1206 John lost
his possessions in central France. Philip was sometimes
displeased with the pontifical intervention between France and
the Plantagenets, but the prestige of Innocent III forced him to
accept it. Protracted difficulties took place between him and
the pope owing to the tenacity with which Innocent III compelled
respect for the indissolubility of even royal marriages.
In 1190 Philip lost his wife, Isabella of Hainault, whom he had
married in order to inherit Artois, and in 1193 he married
Ingeburga, sister of Canute VI, King of Denmark. As he
immediately desired to repudiate her, an assembly of complaisant
barons and bishops pronounced the divorce, but Ingeburga
appealed to Rome. Despite the remonstrances of Celestine III,
Philip, having imprisoned Ingeburga, married Agnes de Meran,
daughter of a Bavarian nobleman. Innocent III, recently elected,
called upon him to repudiate Agnes and take back Ingeburga, and
on the king's refusal the legate, Peter of Capua, placed the
kingdom under an interdict (1198). Most of the bishops refused
to publish the sentence. The Bishops of Paris and Senlis, who
published it, were punished by having their goods confiscated.
At the end of nine months Philip appeared to yield; he feigned
reconciliation with Ingeburga, first before the legate,
Octavian, and then before the Council of Soissons (May, 1201),
but he did not dismiss Agnes de Meran. She died in August, 1201,
and Innocent III consented to legitimize the two children she
had borne the king, but Philip persisted that Rome should
pronounce his divorce from Ingeburga, whom he held prisoner at
Etampes. Rome refused and Philip dismissed the papal legate
(1209). In 1210 he thought of marrying a princess of Thuringia,
and in 1212 renewed his importunities for the divorce with the
legate, Robert de Courc,on. Then, in 1213, having need of the
aid of the pope and the King of Denmark, he suddenly restored
Ingeburga to her station as queen.
Another question which at first caused discord between Philip II
and Innocent III, and regarding which they had later a common
policy, was the question of Germany. Otto of Brunswick, who was
Innocent III's candidate for the dignity of emperor, was the
nephew of Richard and John Lackland. This was sufficient to
cause Philip to interfere in favour of Philip of Suabia. They
formed an alliance in June, 1198, and when Philip of Suabia was
assassinated in 1208 Philip put forward the candidacy of Henry
of Brabant. However, the whole of Germany rallied to Otto of
Brunswick, who became emperor as Otto IV, and in 1209 Philip
feared that the new emperor would invade France. But Otto IV
quarrelled with Innocent III and was excommunicated and the pope
by an unexpected move called upon Philip for subsidies and
troops to aid him against Otto. They agreed to proclaim as
emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the future Frederick II,
Philip giving Frederick 20,000 "marcs" to defray the cost of his
election (November, 1212). Thus was inaugurated the policy by
which France meddled in the affairs of Germany and for the first
time the French king claimed, like the pope, to have a voice in
the imperial election.
The accord established between Innocent and Philip with regard
to the affairs of Germany subsequently extended to those of
England. Throughout his reign Philip dreamed of a landing in
England. As early as 1209 he had negotiated with the English
barons who were hostile to John Lackland, and in 1212 with the
Irish and the Welsh. When John lackland subjected to cruel
persecution the English bishops who, in spite of him, recognized
Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent III in
1212 placed England under interdict, and the legate, Pandulphus,
declared that John Lackland had forfeited his throne. Then
Philip, who received at his court all the exiles from England,
consented to go to England in the name of Innocent III to take
away the crown from John Lackland. It was to be given to his
son, the future Louis VIII. On 22 May, 1213, the French
expedition was to embark at Gravelines, when it was learned that
John Lackland had become reconciled with Rome, and some months
later he became a vassal of the pope. Thus failed, on the eve of
its realization, the project of the French invasion of England.
But the legate of Innocent III induced Philip to punish Ferrand,
Count of Flanders, who was the ally of all the enemies of the
king. At the battle of Bouvines (27 July, 1214) Ferrand, who
supported Otto IV, was taken prisoner. This battle is regarded
as the first French national victory. Philip II, asserting that
he had on both sides two great and terrible lions, Otto and
John, excused himself from taking part in the Crusade against
the Albigenses. He permitted his son Louis to make two
expeditions into Languedoc to support Simon de Montfort in 1215,
and Amaury de Montfort in 1219, and again in 1222 he sent Amaury
de Montfort two hundred knights and ten thousand foot soldiers
under the Archbishop of Bourges and the Count of La Marche. He
foresaw that the French monarchy would profit by the defeat of
the Albigenses.
Philip's reign was characterized by a gigantic advance of the
French monarchy. Before his time the King of France reigned only
over the Ile de France and Berri, and had no communication with
the sea. To this patrimony Philip II added Artois, Amienois,
Valois, Vernandois, a large portion of Beauvaisis, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and a part of Poitou and Saintonge. His
bailiffs and seneschals established the royal power firmly in
those countries. Paris became a fortified city and attracted to
its university students from different countries. Thanks to the
possession of Dieppe, Rouen, and certain parts of Saintonge, the
French monarchy became a maritime and commercial power, and
Philip invited foreign merchants to France. Flanders, Ponthieu,
and Auvergne became subject fiefs, supervised by agents of the
king. He exercised a sort of protectorate over Champagne and
Burgundy. Brittany was in the hands of Pierre de Dreux, a
Capetian of the younger branch. "History", writes M. Luchaire,
"does not present so many, such rapid, and such complete changes
in the fortune of a State".
Philip Augustus did not interfere in episcopal elections. In
Normandy, where the Plantagenets had assumed the custom of
directly nominating the bishops, he did not follow their
example. Guillaume Le Breton, in his poem the "Philippide",
makes him say: "I leave to the men of God the things that
pertain to the service of God." He favoured the emancipation of
communes, desiring to be liked by the middle classes of the
districts he annexed. He often exacted a tax in exchange for the
communal charter. But he did not allow the communes to infringe
on the property of clerics or the episcopal right of
jurisdiction. At Noyen he intervened formally in behalf of the
bishop, who was threatened by the commune. He undertook a
campaign in defence of the bishops and abbots against certain
feudal lords whom he himself desired to humiliate or weaken. In
1180, before he was king, he undertook an expedition into Berri
to punish the Lord of Charenton, the enemy of the monks, and
into Burgundy where the Count of Chalon and the Lord of Beaujeu
were persecuting the Church. In 1186, on the complaint of the
monks, he took possession of Chatillon-sur-Seine, in the Duchy
of Burgundy, and forced the duke to repair the wrongs he had
committed against the Church. In 1210 he sent troops to protect
the Bishop of Clermont, who was threatened by the Count of
Auvergne.
But on the other hand, in virtue of the preponderance which he
wished royalty to have over feudalism, he exacted of the bishops
and abbots the performance of all their feudal duties, including
military service; although for certain territories he was the
vassal of the bishops of Picardy, he refused to pay them homage.
Moreover, he declared with regard to Manasses, bishop of
Orleans, that the royal court was entitled to judge at the
trials of bishops, and he made common cause with lay feudalism
in the endless discussions regarding the province of
ecclesiastical tribunals, which at the beginning of the
thirteenth century were disposed to extend their jurisdiction.
An ordinance issued about 1205 at the instance of the king,
executed in Normandy and perhaps elsewhere, stipulated that in
certain cases lay judges might arrest and try guilty clerics,
that the right of asylum of religious buildings should be
limited, that the Church might not excommunicate those who did
business on Sunday or held intercourse with Jews, and that a
citizen having several children should not give more than half
of his estate to that one of his sons who was a cleric. Finally
he imposed on the clergy heavy financial exactions. He was the
first king who endeavoured to compel clerics to pay the king a
tenth of their income. In 1188 the archdeacon Peter of Blois
defeated this claim, but in 1215 and 1218 Philip renewed it, and
by degrees the resistance of the clergy gave way. Philip,
however, was pious in his own way, and in the advice which St.
Louis gave to his son he said that Philip, because of "God's
goodness and mercy would rather lose his throne than dispute
with the servants of Holy Church". Thus the reputation left by
Philip II was quite different from that of Philip IV, or
Frederick II of Germany. He never carried out towards the Church
a policy of trickery or petty vexations, on the contrary he
regarded it as his collaborator in the foundation of French
unity.
Le Breton, La Philippide, ed. Delaborde (Paris, 1883-5);
Rigord and Le Breton, Chroniques; Delisle, Catalogue des actes
de Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1856); Luchaire, Philippe-Auguste in
Lavisse, Hist. de France, III (Paris, 1901); Luchaire,
L'Universite de Paris sous Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1899);
Gautier, La France sous Philippe-Auguste (Tours, 1899);
Cartellieri, Philipp II August, Koenig von Frankreich (3 vols.,
Leipzig, 1899-1909); Davidsohn, Philipp August von Frankreich
und Ingeborg (1888); Walker, On the increase of royal power in
France under Philip Augustus (1888); Hutton, Philip Augustus
(London, 1896).
Georges Goyau
Philip II (King of Spain)
Philip II
King of Spain, only son of the Emperor Charles V, and Isabella
of Portugal, b. at Valladolid, 21 May, 1527; d. at the Escorial,
13 Sept., 1598. He was carefully educated in the sciences,
learned French and Latin, though he never spoke anything but
Castilian, and also showed much interest in architecture and
music. In 1543 he married his cousin, Maria of Portugal, who
died at the birth of Don Carlos (1545). He was appointed regent
of Spain with a council by Charles V. In 1554 he married Mary
Tudor, Queen of England, who was eleven years his senior. This
political marriage gave Spain an indirect influence on affairs
of England, recently restored to Catholicism; but in 1555 Philip
was summoned to the Low Countries, and Mary's death in the same
year severed the connection between the two countries. At a
solemn conference held at Brussels, 22 Oct., 1555, Charles V
ceded to Philip the Low Countries, the crowns of Castille,
Aragon, and Sicily, on 16 Jan., 1556, and the countship of
Burgundy on the tenth of June. He even thought of securing for
him the imperial crown, but the opposition of his brother
Ferdinand caused him to abandon that project. Having become
king, Philip, devoted to Catholicism, defended the Faith
throughout the world and opposed the progress of heresy, and
these two things are the key to his whole reign. He did both by
means of absolutism. His reign began unpleasantly for a Catholic
sovereign. He had signed with France the Treaty of Vaucelles (5
Feb., 1556), but it was soon broken by France, which joined Paul
IV against him. Like Julius II this pope longed to drive the
foreigners out of Italy. Philip had two wars on his hands at the
same time, in Italy and in the Low Countries. In Italy the Duke
of Alva, Viceroy of Naples, defeated the Duke of Guise and
reduced the pope to such distress that he was forced to make
peace. Philip granted this on the most favourable terms and the
Duke of Alva was even obliged to ask the pope's pardon for
having invaded the Pontifical States. In the Low Countries
Philip defeated the French at Saint Quentin (1557) and
Gravelines (1558) and afterwards signed the Peace of
Cateau-Cambresis (3 April, 1559), which was sealed by his
marriage with Elizabeth of Valois, daughter of Henry II. Peace
concluded, Philip, who had been detained in the Low Countries,
returned to Spain. For more than forty years he directed from
the Prince of Orange decided to proclaim Philip's his cabinet
the affairs of the monarchy. He resided alternately at Madrid
which he made the capital of the kingdom and in villegiatures,
the most famous of which is the Escorial, which he built in
fulfillment of a vow made at the time of the battle of Saint
Quentin.
In Spain, Philip continued the policy of the Catholic Ferdinand
and Isabella. He was merciless in the supression of the Lutheran
heresy, which had appeared in various parts of the country,
notably at Valladolid and Seville. "If my own son were guilty
like you", he replied to a gentleman condemned to death for
heresy who had reproached him for his cruelty, "I should lead
him with my own hands to the stake". He succeeded in
exterminating Protestantism in Spain, but encountered another
enemy no less dangerous. The Moriscoes of the ancient Kingdom of
Granada had been conquered, but they remained the implacable
enemies of their conquerors, from whom they were separated by
religion, language, dress, and manners, and they plotted
incessantly with the Mussulmans outside the country. Philip
wished to force them to renounce their language and dress,
whereupon they revolted and engagedin a bloody struggle against
Spain which lasted three years (1567-70) until ended by Don
Juan, natural son of Charles V. The defeated Moriscoes were
transplanted in great numbers to the interior of the country.
Another event of historical importance in Philip's reign was the
conquest of Portugal in 1580. After the death of the young King
Sebastian at the battle of Alcazar (1578) and that of his
successor the aged Cardinal Henry (1580), Philip II, who through
his mother was a grandson of King Emmanuel, pleaded his title of
heir and sent the Duke of Alva to occupy the country. This was
the only conquest of the reign. Iberian unity, thus realized,
lasted from 1580 to 1640. Other events were the troubles in
Aragon, which were fomented by Antonio Perez, former secretary
of the king. Being pursued for high treason he sought refuge in
his native country, and appealed for protection to its fueros
that he might not be delivered to the Castilian judges, nor to
the Inquisition. The inhabitants of Saragossa defended him by
force of arms and he succeeded in escaping abroad, but Philip
sent an army to punish Aragon, infringed on the fueros and
established absolutism in the Kingdom of Aragon, hitherto proud
of its freedom (1592).
In the Low Countries, where Philip had committed the government
to his aunt, Margaret of Parma, the nobles, chafed because of
their want of influence, plotted and trumped up grievances. They
protested against the presence in the country of several
thousands of Spanish soldiers, against Cardinal de Granvelle's
influence with the regent, and against the severity of Charles
V's decrees against heresy. Philip recalled the Spanish soldiers
and the Cardinal de Greavelle, but he refused to mitigate the
decrees and declared that he did not wish to reign over a nation
of heretics. The difficulties with the Iconoclasts having broken
out he swore to punish them and sent thither the Duke of Alva
with an army, whereupon Margaret of Parma resigned. Alva behaved
as though in a conquered country, caused the arrest and
execution of Count Egmont and de Hornes, who were accused of
complicity with the rebels, created the Council of Troubles,
which was popularly styled the "Council of Blood", defeated the
Prince of Orange and his brother who had invaded the country
with German mercenaries, but could not prevent the "Sea-beggars"
from capturing Brille. He followed up his military successes but
was recalled in 1573. His successor Requesens could not recover
Leyden. Influenced by the Prince of Orange the provinces
concluded the "Pacification of Ghent" which regulated the
religious situation in the Low Countries without royal
intervention. The new governor, Don Juan, upset the calculations
of Orange by accepting the "Pacification ", and finally the
Prince of Orange decided to proclaim Philip's deposition by the
revolted provinces. The king replied by placing the prince under
the ban; shortly afterwards he was slain by an assassin (1584).
Nevertheless, the united provinces did not submit and were lost
to Spain. Those of the South, however, were recovered one after
another by the new governor, Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma.
But he having died in 1592 and the war becoming more difficult
against the rebels, led by the great general Maurice of Nassau,
son of William of Orange, Philip II realized that he must change
his policy and ceded the Low Countries to his daughter Isabella,
whom he espoused to the Archduke Albert of Austria, with the
provision that the provinces would be returned to Spain in case
there were no children by this union (1598). (See ALVA; EGMONT;
GRANVELLE; NETHERLANDS.) The object of Philip's reign was only
partly realized. He had safeguarded the religious unity of Spain
and had exterminated heresy in the southern Low Countries, but
the northern Low Countries were lost to him forever.
Philip had three enemies to contend with abroad, Islam, England,
and France. Islam was master of the Mediterranean, being in
possession of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt, all the
coast of northern Africa (Tunis, Algiers, Morocco); it had just
conquered the Island of Cyprus and laid siege to the Island of
Malta (1505), which had valiantly repulsed the assault. Dragut,
the Ottoman admiral, was the terror of the Mediterranean. On
several occasions Philip had fought against the Mussulman peril,
meeting alternately with success and defeat. He therefore
eagerly joined the Holy League organized by Pius V to resist
Islam, and which Venice consented to join. The fleet of the
League, commanded by Don Juan, brother of Philip II, inflicted
on the Turkish fleet the terrible defeat of Lepanto (7 Oct.,
1571), the results of which would have been greater had Venice
not proved false and if Pius V had not died in 1572.
Nevertheless, the Turkish domination of the Mediterranean was
ended and in 1578 Philip concluded a treaty with the Turks which
lasted till the end of his reign. Relations of intimacy with
England had ceased at the death of Mary Tudor. Philip attempted
to renew them by his chimerical project of marriage with
Elizabeth, who had not yet become the cruel persecutor of
Catholicism. When she constituted herself the protectress of
Protestant interests throughout the world and did all in her
power to encourage the revolt of the Low Countries, Philip
thought of contending with her in her own country by espousing
the cause of Mary Stuart, but Elizabeth did away with the latter
in 1587, and furnished relief to the Low Countries against
Philip, who thereupon armed an immense fleet (the Invincible
Armada) against England. But being led by an incompetent
commander it accomplished nothing and was almost wholly
destroyed by storms (1588). This was an irreparable disaster
which inaugurated Spain's naval decline. The English corsairs
could with impunity pillage her colonies and under Drake even
her own coast; in 1596 the Duke of Essex pillaged the
flourishing town of Cadiz, and the sceptre of the seas passed
from Spain to England. From 1559 Philip II had been at peace
with France, and had contented himself with urging it to crush
out heresy. French intervention in favour of the Low Countries
did not cause him to change his attitude, but when at the death
of Henry III in 1589 the Protestant Henry of Bourbon became heir
to the throne of France, Philip II allied himself with the
Guises, who were at the head of the League, supplied them with
money and men, and on several occasions sent to their relief his
great general Alexander Farnese. He even dreamed of obtaining
the crown of France for his daughter Isabella, but this daring
project was not realized. The conversion of Henry IV (1593). to
Catholicism removed the last obstacle to his accession to the
French throne. Apparently Philip II failed to grasp the
situation, since he continued for two years more the war against
Henry IV, but his fruitless efforts were finally terminated in
1595 by the absolution of Henry IV by Clement VIII.
No sovereign has been the object of such diverse judgments.
While the Spaniards regarded him as their Solomon and called him
"the prudent king" (el rey prudente), to Protestants he was the
"demon of the south" (daemon meridianus) and most cruel of
tyrants. This was because, having constituted himself the
defender of Catholicism throughout the world, he encountered
innumerable enemies, not to mention such adversaries as Antonio
Perez and William of Orange who maligned him so as to justify
their treason. Subsequently poets (Schiller in his "Don
Carlos"), romance-writers, and publicists repeated these
calumnies. As a matter of fact Philip II joined great qualities
to great faults. He was industrious, tenacious, devoted to
study, serious, simple-mannered, generous to those who served
him, the friend and patron of arts. He was a dutiful son, a
loving husband and father, whose family worshipped him. His
piety was fervent, he had a boundless devotion to the Catholic
Faith and was, moreover, a zealous lover of Justice. His stoical
strength in adversity and the courage with which he endured the
sufferings of his last illness are worthy of admiration. On the
other hand he was cold, suspicious, secretive, scrupulous to
excess, indecisive and procrastinating, little disposed to
clemency or forgetfulness of wrongs. His religion was austere
and sombre. He could not understand opposition to heresy except
by force. Imbued with ideas of absolutism, as were all the
rulers of his time, he was led into acts disapproved by the
moral law. His cabinet policy, always behind-hand with regard to
events and ill-informed concerning the true situation, explains
his failures to a great extent. To sum up we may cite the
opinion of Baumstark: "He was a sinner, as we all are, but he
was also a king and a Christian king in the full sense of the
term".
GACHARD, Correspondance de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays
Bas (Brussels and Ghent, 1848-1851); IDEM, Lettres de Philippe
II a ses filles (Paris, 1884); IDEM, Don Carlos et Philippe II
(Paris, 1863); PRESCOTT, History of the reign of Philip II, King
of Spain (London, 1855); CORDOBA, Felipe II, rey de Espana
(Madrid, 1876-78); BAUMSTARK, Philippe II, Konig von Spanien
(Freiburg, 1875), tr. into French, KURTH (1877); MONTANA, Nueva
luz y juicio verdadero sobre Felipe II (Madrid, 1882); FORNERON,
Histoire de Philippe II (Paris, 1882); HUME, Philip II of Spain
(London, 1897).
GODEFROID KURTH
Philip IV (The Fair)
Philip IV
Surnamed Le Bel (the Fair)
King of France, b. at Fontainebleau, 1268; d. there, 29 Nov.,
1314; son of Philip III and Isabel of Aragon; became king, 5
Oct. 1285, on the death of his father, and was consecrated at
Reims, 6 Jan., 1286, with his wife Jeanne, daughter of Henry I,
King of Navarre, Count of Champagne and Brie; this marriage
united these territories to the royal domain. Having taken
Viviers and Lyons from the empire, Valenciennes, the inhabitants
of which united themselves voluntarily with France, La Marche
and Angoumois, which he seized from the lawful heirs of Hugues
de Lusigan, Philip whished to expel Edward I of England from
Guienne, all of which province, with the exception of Bordeaux
and Bayonne, was occupied in 1294 and 1295. By the Treaty of
Montreuil, negotiated by Boniface VIII, he gave Guienne as a
gift to his daughter Isabel, who married the son of Edward I, on
condition that this young prince should hold the province as
Philip's vassal. Philip wished to punish Count Guy of Flanders,
an ally of England, and caused Charles of Valois to invade his
territory, but he was defeated at Coutrai by the Flemings, who
were roused by the heavy taxes imposed on them by Philip; he
took his revenge on the Flemings at the naval victory of
Zierichzee and the land victory of Mons en Puelle; then in 1305
he recognized Robert, Guy's son, as his vassal and retained
possession of Lille, Douai, Orchies and Valenciennes. Having
thus extended his kingdom, Philip endeavored energetically to
centralize the government and impose a very rigorous fiscal
system. Legists like Enguerrand, Philippe de Marigny, Pierre de
Latilly, Pierre Flotte, Raoul de Presle, and Guillaume de
Plassan, helped him to establish firmly this royal absolutism
and set up a tyrannical power.
These legists were called the chevaliers de l'hotel, the
chevaliers es lois, the milites regis; they were not nobles,
neither did they bear arms, but they ranked as knights. The
appearance of these legists in the Government of France is one
of the leading events of the reign of Philip IV. Renan explains
its significance in these words: "An entirely new class of
politicians, owing their fortune entirely to their own merit and
personal efforts, unreservedly devoted to the king who had made
them, and rivals of the Church, whose place they hoped to fill
in many matters, thus appeared in the history of France, and
were destined to work a profound change in the conduct of public
affairs."
It was these legists who incited and supported Philip IV in his
conflict with the papacy and the trial of the Templars. In the
articles Boniface VIII; Clement V; Molai; Templars, will be
found an account of the relations of Philip IV with the Holy
See; M. Lizerand, in 1910, has given us a study on Philip IV and
Clement V, containing thirty-seven unpublished letters written
by the two sovereigns. The principal adviser of Philip in his
hostile relations with the Curia was the legist Guillaume de
Nogaret (q.v.). Renan, who made a close study of Nogaret's
dealings with Boniface VIII, Clement V, and the Templars, thinks
that despite his ardent profession of Catholic fidelity he was
somewhat hypocritical, at all events "he was not an honest man,"
and that "he could not have been deceived by the false testimony
which he stirred up and the sophisms he provoked." Nogaret's
methods of combating Boniface VIII and the Templars are better
understood when we examine, in Gaston Paris's work, the curious
trial of Guichard, Bishop of Troyes, for witchcraft.
Another important personage whose curious writings must be read
to understand the policy of Philip correctly is Pierre Dubois.
He had been a pupil of St. Thomas Aquinas at the University of
Paris, and was a lawyer at Coutances. In 1300 Dubois wrote a
work on the means of shortening the wars and conflicts of
France; in 1302 he published several virulent pamphlets against
Boniface VIII; between 1304 and 1308, he wrote a very important
work "De recuperatione Terrae Sanctae"; in 1309 alone, he wrote
on the question of the Holy Roman Empire, on the Eastern
question, and against the Templars. Dubois started from the idea
that France ought to subdue the papacy, after which ti would be
easy for the King of France to use the papal influence for his
own advantage. He whished his king to become master of the Papal
States, to administer them, to reduce the castles and cities of
this state to his obedience, and to force Tuscany, Sicily,
England, and Aragon, vassal countries of the Holy See, to do
homage to the King of France; in return the king was to grant
the pope the revenues of the Papal States. "It depends on the
pope," wrote he in his work of 1302, "to rid himself of his
worldly occupations and to preserve his revenues without having
any trouble about them; if he does not wish to accept such an
advantageous offer, he will incur universal reproach for his
cupidity, pride, and rash presumption." "Clement V," continued
Dubois in his treatise "De recuperation Terrae Sanctae," "after
having given up his temporal possessions to the King of France,
would be protected against the miasma of Rome, and would live
long in good health, in his native land of France, where he
would create a sufficient number of French cardinals to preserve
the papacy from the rapacious hands of the Romans." Dubois
desired not only that the King of France should subjugate the
papacy, but that the empire should be forced to cede to France
the left bank of the Rhine, Provence, Savoy, and all its rights
in Liguria, Venice and Lombardy.
In 1308, after the death of the Emperor Albert I, he even
thought of having the pope confer the imperial crown on the
French Capets. He also devised plans for subjugating Spain. Thus
reorganized by France Christian Europe was (in the mind of
Pierre Dubois) to undertake the Crusade; the Holy Land would be
reconquered, and on the return, the Palaeologi, who reigned at
Constantinople, would be replaced by the Capetian, Charles of
Valois, representing the rights of Catherine de Courtenay to the
Latin Empire of Constantinople. The personal influence of Pierre
Dubois on Philip IV must not be exaggerated. Although all his
writings were presented to the king, Dubois never had an
official place in Philips's council. However, there is an
indisputable parallelism between his ideas and certain political
maneuvers of Philip IV. For instance on 9 June, 1308, Philip
wrote to Henry of Carinthia, King of Bohemia, to propose Charles
of Valois as a candidate for the crown of Germany; and on 11
June he sent three knights into Germany to offer money to the
electors. This was fruitless labour, however, for Henry of
Luxemburg was elected and Clement V, less subservient to the
King of France than certain enemies of the papacy have said,
hastened to confirm the election.
Philip IV was not really a free-thinker; he was religious, and
even made pilgrimages: his attitude toward the inquisition is
not that of a free-thinker, as is especially apparent in the
trial of the Franciscan Bernard Delicieux. The latter brought
the deputies of Carcassonne and Albi to Philip IV at Senlis, to
complain of the Dominican inquisitors of Languedoc; the result
of his action was an ordinance of Philip putting the Dominican
inquisitors under the control of the bishops. On the receipt of
this news Languedoc became inflamed against the Dominicans;
Bernard Delicieux in 1303 headed the movement in Carcassonne,
and when in 1304 Philip and the queen visited Toulouse and
Carcassonne, he organized tumultuous manifestations. The king
was displeased, and discontinued his proceedings against the
Dominicans. Then Bernard Delicieux and some of the people of
Carcassonne conspired to deliver the town into the hands of
Prince Fernand, Infant of Majorca; Philip caused sixteen of the
inhabitants to be hanged, and imposed a heavy fine on the town;
and this conspiracy of Bernard Delicieux against the king and
the Inquisition was one of the reasons of his condemnation later
in 1318 to perpetual In Pace, or monastic imprisonment.
Philip IV was not therefore in any way a systematic adversary of
the inquisition. On the other hand, recently published documents
show that he was sincerely attached to the idea of a Crusade.
From the memoirs of Rabban Cauma, ambassador of Argoun, King of
the Tatars, translated from the Syriac by Abbe Chabot, we learn
that Philip said to Rabban in Sept., 1287: "If the Mongolians,
who are not Christians, fight to capture Jerusalem, we have much
more reason n to fight; if it be God's will, we will go with an
army." And the news of the fall of Saint-Jean d'Acre (1291),
which induced so many provincial councils to express a desire
for a new crusade was certainly calculated to strengthen this
resolution of the king. We have referred to Dubois's zeal for
the conquest of the Holy Land; Nogaret was perhaps a still
stronger advocate of the project; but in the plan which he
outlined about 1310, the first step, according to him, was to
place all the money of the Church of France in the king's hands.
The French Church under Philip IV displayed very little
independence; it was in reality enslaved to the royal will.
Almost every year it contributed to the treasury with or without
the pope's approval, a tenth and sometimes a fifth of its
revenues; these pecuniary sacrifices were consented to by the
clergy in the provincial councils, which in return asked certain
concessions or favors of the king; but Philip's fiscal agents,
if they met with resistance, laid down the principle that the
king could by his own authority collect from all his subjects,
especially in case of necessity, whatever taxes he wished. His
officers frequently harassed the clergy in a monstrous manner;
and the documents by which Philip confirmed the immunities of
the Church always contained subtle restrictions which enabled
the king's agents to violate them.
A list of the gravamina of the Churches and the clerics,
discussed at the Council of Vienne (1311), contains ample proof
of the abuse of authority to which the Church was subjected, and
the writer of the poem "Avisemens pour le roy Loys," composed in
1315 for Louis X, exhorted this new king to live in peace with
the Church, which Philip IV had not done. To concentrate in his
hands all the wealth of the French Church for the Crusade, and
then to endeavor to make an agreement with the papacy for the
control and disposition of the income of the Universal Church,
was the peculiar policy of Philip IV. Recently some verses have
been discovered, written by a contemporary on a leaf of register
of the deliberations of Notre-Dame de Chartres, which reveal the
impression produced by this policy on the minds of certain
contemporaries:
Jam Petri navais titubat, racio quia clavis.
Errat; rex, papa, facti sunt unica capa,
Declarant, do des Pilatus et alter Herodes.
Philip IV, by his formal condemnation of the memory of Boniface
VIII, appointed himself judge of the orthodoxy of the popes. It
was laid down as a principle, says Geoffrey of Paris, that "the
king is to submit to the spiritual power only if the pope is in
the right faith." The adversaries of the "theocracy" of the
Middle Ages hail Philip IV as its destroyer; and in their
enthusiasm for him, by an extraordinary error, they proclaim him
a precursor of modern liberty. On the contrary he was an
absolutist in the fullest sense of the term. The Etats generaux
of 1302, in which the Third Estate declared that the king had no
superior on earth, were the precursors of the false Gallican
theories of Divine right, so favorable to the absolutism of
sovereigns.
The civilization of the Middle Ages was based on a great
principle, an essentially liberal principle, from which arose
the political liberty of England; according to that principle,
taxes before being raised by royal authority, ought to be
approved by the tax-payers. Boniface VIII in the conflict of
1302 was only maintaining this principle, when he insisted on
the consent of the clergy to the collection of the tithes. In
the struggle between Philip and Boniface, Philip represents
absolutism, Boniface the old medieval ideas of autonomy. "The
reign of Philip IV," writes Renan, "is the reign which
contributed most to form the France of the five succeeding
centuries, with its good and bad qualities. The milites regis,
those ennobled plebeians, became the agents of all important
political business; the princes of the royal blood alone
remained superior to or on an equality with them; the real
nobility, which elsewhere established the parliamentary
governments, was excluded from participating in the public
policy." Renan is right in declaring that the first act of the
French magistracy was "to diminish the power of the Church per
fas et nefas" to establish the absolutism of the king; and that
such conduct was for this magistracy "an original sin."
Historiens de la France t. XX, XXIII; Langlois in Lavisse,
Histoire de France, III (Paris 1903); Boutaric, La France sous
Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1861); Renan, Etudes sur l'histoire
religieuse du regne de Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1899); Wenck,
Philippe der Schone von Frankreich, seine Personlichkeit und das
Urteil der Zeitgenossen (Marbourg, 1905); Finke, Zur
Charakteristik Philipps des Schonen in Mitteilungen des
Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichte, XXVI (1905); Melanges
sur le Regne de Philippe le Bel: recueil d'articles extraits du
Moyen Age (Chalon-sur-Saone, 1906); Holtzman, Wilhelm von
Nogaret (Freiburg im Br., 1897); Paris, Un proces criminel sous
Philippe le Bel in Revue du Palais (Aug., 1908); Langlois, Les
papiers de G. de Nogaret et de G. de Plaisians Tresor des
Chartes (Notices et extraits des manuscrits), XXXIV; Langlois,
Doleances du cleerge de France au temps de Philippe le Bel in
Revue Bleue (9 Sept., and 14 Oct., 1905); Lizerand, Clement V et
Philippe IV le Bel (Paris 1910); Arguillere, L'Appel au concile
sous Philippe le Bel et la genese des theories conciliares in
Revue des Questions Historiques (1911).
GEORGES GOYAU
St. Philip of Jesus
St. Philip of Jesus
Born in Mexico, date unknown; died at Nagasaki early in
February, 1597. Though unusually frivolous as a boy, he joined
the Discalced Franciscans of the Province of St. Didacus,
founded by St. Peter Baptista, with whom he suffered martyrdom
later. After some months in the Order, Philip grew tired of
monastic life, left the Franciscans in 1589, took up a
mercantile career, and went to the Philippines, where he led a
life of pleasure. Later he desired to re-enter the Franciscans
and was again admitted at Manila in 1590. After some years he
was to have been ordained at the monastery in Mexico, the
episcopal See of Manila being at that time vacant. He sailed, 12
July, 1596, but a storm drove the vessel upon the coast of
Japan. The governor of the province confiscated the ship and
imprisoned its crew and passengers, among whom were another
Franciscan, Juan de Zamorra, two Augustinians, and a Dominican.
The discovery of soldiers, cannon, and ammunition on the ship
led to the suspicion that it was intended for the conquest of
Japan, and that the missionaries were merely to prepare the way
for the soldiers. This was also said, falsely and unwarrantably,
by one of the crew (cf. JAPAN, CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN,
Catholicism). This enraged the Japanese Emperor Hideyoshi,
generally called Taicosama by Europeans. He commanded, 8
December, 1596, the arrest of the Franciscans in the monastery
at Miako, now Kyoto, whither St. Philip had gone. The religious
were kept prisoners in the monastery until 30 December, when
they were transferred to the city prison. There were six
Franciscans, seventeen Japanese tertiaries, and the Japanese
Jesuit, Paul Miki, with his two native servants. The ears of the
prisoners were cropped on 3 January, 1597, and they were paraded
through the streets of Kyoto; on 21 January they were taken to
Osaka, and thence to Nagasaki, which they reached on 5 February.
They were taken to a mountain near the city, "Mount of the
Martyrs", bound upon crosses, after which they were pierced with
spears. St. Philip was beatified in 1627 by Urban VIII, and,
with his companions, canonized 8 June, 1862, by Pius IX. He is
the patron saint of the city of Mexico.
RIBADENEGRA, Historia de las Islas del Archipielago y Reynos de
la Gran China, Tartaria . . . y Japon, V, VI (Barcelona, 1601);
these are sometimes wrongly cited as Actas del martirio de San
Pedro Bautista y sus companeros (Barcelona, 1601); Archivum
franc. hist., I (Quaracchi, 1908), 536 sqq.; FRANCISCO DE S.
ANTONIO, Chron. de la apostol. prov. de S. Gregorio . . . in Las
Islas Philipinas, III (Manila, 1743), 31 sqq.; Acta SS., Feb.I,
723 sqq.; GERONIMO DE JESUS, Hist. della Christandad del Japon
(1601); DA CIVEZZA, Saggio di Bibliog. Sanfrancesc. (Prato,
1879), 250, 590 sqq., 523; IDEM, Storia univ. delle missioni
franc., VII, ii (Prato, 1891), 883 sqq.; DA ORIMA, Storia dei
ventitre Martiri Giapponesi dell' Ord. Min. Osserv. (Rome,
1862); MELCHIORRI, Annal. Ord. Min. (Ancona, l869), 101 sqq. 218
sqq., 260 sqq.
MICHAEL BIHL
Philip of the Blessed Trinity
Philip of the Blessed Trinity
(ESPRIT JULIEN).
Discalced Carmelite, theologian, born at Malaucene, near
Avignon, 1603; died at Naples, 28 February, 1671. He took the
habit at Lyons where he made his profession, 8 September, 1621.
Choosing the missionary life, he studied two years at the
seminary in Rome and proceeded in February, 1629, to the Holy
Land and Persia, and thence to Goa where he became prior, and
teacher of philosophy and theology. After the martyrdom of
Dionysius, a Nativitate, his pupil, and Redemptus a Cruce, 29
Nov., 1638, Philip collected all available evidence and set out
for Rome to introduce the cause of their beatification which,
however, only terminated in 1900. He did not return to the
mission, but was entrusted with important offices in France, in
1665, was elected general of the order with residence in Rome,
and three years later, re-elected. While visiting all the
provinces of his order, he was caught in a terrific gale off the
coast of Calabria, and reached Naples in dying condition.
Besides the classical languages he spoke fluently French,
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, and Arabic. Of his
numerous works the following have lasting value: "Summa
philosophiae", 4 vols., Lyons, 1648, in which he follows not
only the spirit but also the method of St. Thomas Aquinas;
"Summa theologiae thomisticae", 5 vols., Lyons, 1653; "Summa
theologiae mysticae", Lyons, 1656; reprinted in 3 vols., Paris,
1884; "Itinerarium orientale", Lyons, 1649, also in Italian and
French; "Decor Carmeli religiosi", the lives of the saints and
saintly members of his Order, Lyons, 1665; "Theologia
carmelitana", Rome, 1665. The two last named and some smaller
works dealing to some extent with historical matters of a
controversial nature, called forth a reply from Pierre-Joseph de
Haitze, under the titles "Des Moines empruntez", and "Des Moines
travestis".
HENRICUS A SS.SACRAMENTO, Collectio Scriptorum Ord. Carmel.
Excalc.II (Savona, 1884), 110.
B. ZIMMERMAN
Philippi
Philippi
(Gr. Philippoi, Lat. Philippi).
Philippi was a Macedonian town, on the borders of Thracia.
Situated on the summit of a hill, it dominated a large and
fertile plain, intersected by the Egnatian Way. It was
north-west of Mount Pangea, near the River Gangites, and the
AEgean Sea. In 358 b.c. it was taken, enlarged, and fortified by
the King of Macedonia, Philip II, hence its name Philippi.
Octavius Augustus (42 b.c.) conferred on it his jus Italicum
(Acts, xiv, 12), which made the town a miniature Rome, and
granted it the institutions and privileges of the citizens of
Rome. That is why we find at Philippi, along with a remnant of
the Macedonians, Roman colonists together with some Jews, the
latter, however, so few that they had no synagogue, but only a
place of prayer (proseuche). Philippi was the first European
town in which St. Paul preached the Faith. He arrived there with
Silas, Timothy, and Luke about the end of 52 a.d., on the
occasion of his second Apostolic voyage. The Acts mention in
particular a woman called Lydia of Thyatira, a seller of purple,
in whose house St. Paul probably dwelt during his stay at
Philippi. His labours were rewarded by many conversions (Acts,
xvi), the most important taking place among women of rank, who
seem to have retained their influence for a long time. The
Epistle to the Philippians deals in a special manner with a
dispute that arose between two of them, Evodia and Syntyche (iv,
2). In a disturbance of the populace, Paul and Silas were beaten
with rods and cast into prison, from which being miraculously
delivered, they set out for Thessalonica. Luke, however,
continued to work for five years.
The Philippians remained very attached and grateful to their
Apostle and on several occasions sent him pecuniary aid (twice
to Thessalonica, Phil., iv, 14-16; once to Corinth, II Cor., xi,
8-9; and once to Rome, Phil., iv, 10-18). See EPISTLE TO THE
PHILIPPIANS). Paul returned there later; he visited them on his
second journey, about 58, after leaving Ephesus (Acts, xx, 1-2).
It is believed that he wrote his Second Epistle to the
Corinthinas at Philippi, whither he returned on his way back to
Jerusalem, passing Easter week there (Acts, xx, 5-6). He always
kept in close communication with the inhabitants. Having been
arrested at Caesarea and brought to Rome, he wrote to them the
Epistle we have in the New Testament, in which he dwells at
great length on his predilection for them (i, 3, 7; iv, 1;
etc.). Paul probably wrote them more letters than we possess;
Polycarp, in his epistle to thte Philippians (II, 1 sq.), seems
to allude to several letters (though the Greek word, 'epistolai,
is used also in speaking of a single letter), and Paul himself
(Phil., iii, 1) seems to refer to previous writings. He hoped
(i, 26; ii, 24) to revisit Philippi after his captivity, and he
may have written there his First Epistle to Timothy (Tim., i,
3). Little is known of the subsequent history of the town. Later
it was destroyed by the Turks; to-day nothing remains but some
ruins.
For bibliography see EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS.
A. Vander Herren
Philippi, Titular See of
Philippi
A titular metropolitan see in Macedonia. As early as the sixth
century b.c. we learn of a region called Datos, overrun by the
inhabitants of Thasos, in which there was an outlying post
called Crenides (the little springs), and a seaport, Neapolis or
Cavala. About 460 b.c. Crenides and the country lying inland
fell into the hands of the Thracians, who doubtless were its
original inhabitants. In 360 b.c. the Thasians, aided by
Callistratus the Athenian and other exiles, re-established the
town of Datos, just when the discovery of auriferous deposits
was exciting the neighbouring peoples. Philip of Macedonia took
possession of it, and gave it his name, Philippi in the plural,
as there were different sections of the town scattered at the
foot of Mount Pangaeus. He erected there a fortress barring the
road between the Pangaeus and the Haemus. The gold mines, called
Asyla, which were energetically worked, gave Philip an annual
revenue of more than 1000 talents. In 168 b.c. the Romans
captured the place. In the autumn of 42 b.c. the celebrated
battle between the triumvirs and Brutus and Cassius was fought
on the neighbouring marshy plain. In the first conflict Brutus
triumphed over Octavius, whilst Antony repulsed Cassius, who
committed suicide. Unable to maintain discipline in his army,
and defeated twenty days later, Brutus also took his life. The
same year a Roman colony was established there, which after the
battle of Actium took the name of Colonia Augusta Julia
Philippensis. When St. Ignatius of Antioch and the martyrs
Zosimus and Rufus were passing through Philippi, St. Ignatius
told the Christians of that town to send a letter of
congratulation to the faithful of Antioch. They therefore wrote
to Polycarp of Smyrna, asking him at the same time for the
writings of St. Ignatius. Polycarp answered them in a letter,
still extant, which was written before the death of St.
Ignatius.
Although the Church of Philippi was of Apostolic origin, it was
never very important; it was a suffragan bishopric of
Thessalonica. Towards the end of the ninth century it ranked as
a metropolitan see and had six suffragan dioceses; in the
fifteenth century it had only one, the See of Eleutheropolis.
The Archdiocese of Cavala was reunited to the metropolis in
December, 1616. In 1619, after a violent dispute with the
Metropolitan of Drama, Clement, the titular of Philippi, got
permission to assume the title of Drama also, and this was
retained by the Metropolitan of Philippi until after 1721, when
it was suppressed and the metropolis of Drama alone continued.
In the "Echos d'Orient", III, 262-72, the writer of this article
compiled a critical list of the Greek titulars of Philippi,
containing sixty-two names, whereas only eighteen are given in
Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", II, 67-70. Some Latin titulars
are cited in Eubel, "Hierarchia catholica medii aevi", I, 418;
II, 238; III, 291; Le Quien, op. cit., III, 1045. In the middle
of the fourteenth century, Philippi is mentioned in connexion
with the wars between John V, Palaeologus, and Cantacuzenus, who
has left a description of it (P. G., CLIV, 336). The ruins of
Philippi lie near the deserted hamlet of Filibedjik, fifteen
kilometres from Cavala, in the vilayet of Salonica; they contain
the remains of the acropolis, a theatre anterior to the Roman
occupations, a temple of Sylvanus, and numerous sculptured rocks
bearing inscriptions.
LEAKE, Northern Greece, III, 215-23; SMITH, Dict, of Gr. and
Rom. Geog., s. v.; SEGNITZ, De Philippensibus tanquam luminaria
in mundo (Leipzig, 1728); HOOG, De coetus christianorum
Philippensis conditione prima (Leyden, 1823); HEUZEY, Mission
archeologique de Macedoine (Paris, 1876), 1-124; MERTZIDES,
Philippes (Constantinople, 1897), in Greek; TOMASCHEK, Zur Kunde
der Hoemus-Halbinsel (Vienna, 1897), 77; FILLION in Dict. de la
Bible. s. v.
S. VAILHE.
Philippine Islands
Philippine Islands
Situation and Area. The Philippine Islands lie between 116DEG
40' and 126DEG and 34' E. long., and 4DEG 40' and 21DEG 10' N.
lat. The islands are washed by the China Sea on the north and
the west, the Pacific Ocean on the east, and the Sea of Celebes
on the south. They are nearly south of Japan, and north of
Borneo and the Celebes, with which they are connected by three
partly-submerged isthmuses. The archipelago belongs to the same
geographic region as Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, and therefore to
Asia rather than to Oceanica. In all there are 3141 islands;
1668 of them are listed by name. Luzon has an area of 40,969 sq.
miles; Mindanao, 36,292 sq. m. Nine islands have an area between
1000-10,000 sq m; 20 between 100 and 1000 sq. m.; 73 between 10
and 100 sq. m.; and 262 between 1 and 10 sq. m. The remaining
2775 islands are each less than 1 sq. m. The total area of the
islands is 115,026 sq. m. The extent of the Earth's surface
included by the boundaries of the treaty lines is about 800,000
sq.m.
Physical Geography -- Fauna and Flora. The scenery of the
islands, especially Luzon, is very beautiful. The greatest known
elevation, Mt. Apo, in Mindanao, is over 10,000 ft.; it was
ascended for the first time by Father Mateo Gisbert, S.J.,
accompanied by two laymen, in 1880. There are twenty well-known
and recent volcanic cones, twelve of them more or less active.
Mayon Volcano, about 8000 ft., is probably the most beautiful
symmetrical volcanic cone in the world. There are no very large
rivers; the Cagayan of northern Luzon and the Rio Grande and the
Agusan, both in Mindanao, are more than 200 miles in length. The
largest lakes are Laguna de Bay, near Manila, and Laguna de
Lanao, in Mindanao; the surface of the latter is 2200 ft above
sea-level. Laguna de Bombon, in Batangas Province, Luzon, is the
crater of an immense volcano, of roughly elliptical shape,
seventeen by twelve miles. On an island in the lake is the
active volcano of Taal. The fauna of the Philippines resembles
that of the neighboring Malayan Islands to a certain extent.
Two-thirds of the birds of the Philippines are peculiar to them;
what is more strange is that 286 species of birds found in
Luzon, at least fifty-one are not to be met with in any other
part of the archipelago. The flora of the islands is similar to
that of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, but with differences
sufficiently numerous to give it a marked individuality. Forests
form seven-tenths of the area of the archipelago; they embrace a
great variety of woods, many of them highly valuable.
Mineral Resources. Coal is found in many parts of the islands.
two mines are now in operation on the small island of Batan,
Albay Province, Southern Luzon. The total output in the
Philippines during 1909 was valued at nearly $100,000. About
$250,000 worth of gold was mined the same year. Iron is also
found, the product in 1909 being worth a little more than
$15,000.
Climate. The climate is, generally speaking, tropical, although
there are points in the islands where it cannot strictly be so
termed. The mean temperature in Manila during the period
1883-1902 was 80DEGF.; the average maximum during the same time
was 97DEG and minimum 63DEG. The average rainfall in Manila is
something more than 75 inches. Baguio, Province of Benguet, has
been called the Simla of the Philippines. Climatic conditions
are so favourable that the commission and assembly held their
sessions there this year (1910) during the warm months. The mean
minimum temperatures of four months of the year are lower in
Baguio than at Simla, and almost equal for two other months. The
monthly means are nearly equal for the two places during five
months.
Railways. Railway lines are in operation in Luzon, Panay, Cebu,
and Negros, about four hundred miles in all.
Population. A census of the islands taken in 1903 estimates the
population at 7,635,426, of whom 6,987,686 are classed as
civilized and 647,740 are wild.
There are no question in Spanish times about the number of
Christians; but a difference in opinion prevails about the
number of the wild people. An estimate published in Madrid in
1891 puts down the non-civilized tribes (Moros included) at
1,400,000. According to the Director of the Census of 1903,
there has been tendency to exaggerate; he admits that the number
647,740 is possibly too small, but that it is probably within
ten per cent of the true number.
Wild Tribes. The Negritos are believed to have been the
aborigines of the islands. There remains about 23,000 of these,
leading to-day a primitive life, nomadic within a certain
district, living in groups of twenty or thirty under a chief.
They are a race of dwarfs, four feet eight inches in height.
They are of sooty black colour, their hair woolly, their toes
almost as prehensile as fingers. The Negritos, it is thought,
once occupied the entire archipelago, but were driven back into
the mountains by the Malays.
Among other wild tribes may be mentioned the Igorottes in
Northern Luzon, some of whom are head-hunters. They are an
industrious and warlike race. Belgian missionaries have been
working among them in the past few years with considerable
fruit. The Ibilao or Ilongot is noted for his bloodthirsty
propensities; the Ifugaos are said to resemble the Japanese in
appearance. They use the lasso with great dexterity, and with it
capture the luckless traveler, decapitate him, and add the head
to their collection. They wear as many rings in their ears as
they have taken heads. In Palawan (Paragua) the most numerous
tribe is that of the Tagbanuas, many of whom have been
Christianized. The Manguianes occupy the interior of Mindoro;
they are a docile race and do not flee from civilized man. Among
the wild tribes of Mindanao may be mentioned the Manobos,
Bagobos, Bukidnons, Tirurays, and Subanos. They are classed as
Indonesians by some ethnologists. Slavery is practised, and
human sacrifices are known to have taken place within the past
few years.
The Moros or Mohammedan Malays chiefly inhabit Mindanao and the
Sulu archipelago, though they are found also in Basilan and
Palawan. They were professional pirates, and advanced as far as
Manila at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards. They killed
large numbers of Filipinos, and carried others into slavery.
Until within about sixty years ago, when Spanish gunboats of
light draught were introduced, they made marauding excursions
into the Visayan islands (Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte,
Samar, etc.), carrying off a thousand captives as slaves
annually. They were the great obstacle to the civilization of
Mindanao. The Moro is possessed of much physical strength, is
indifferent to bloodshed, too proud to work, and extremely
fanatical. Many of them build their towns in the water, with
movable bamboo bridges connected with the shore. Flanking their
settlements they build cottas or forts. The walls of some of
these were twenty-four feet thick and thirty feet high. The
United States Government respects the Moro custom of discarding
the hat, by permitting the Moro Constabulary (military police)
to wear a Turkish fex and to go barefoot.
Extensive missionary work has been done by the Jesuits in
Mindanao. Previous to the American occupation, they ministered
to 200,000 Christians in various parts of the islands. Even
among the Moros their efforts were successful and in one year
(1892) they baptized 3000 Moros in the district of Davao. They
established two large orphan asylums, one for boys and the other
for girls, at Tamontaca, where liberated slave-children were
trained to a useful life, and which later formed the basis of
new Christian villages. For lack of support, a great deal of
this work had to be abandoned with the withdrawal of Spanish
sovereignty from the islands.
Christian Tribes. The inhabitants of Luzon and adjacent islands
are the Tagalogs, Pampangans, Bicols, Pangasinans, Ilocanos,
Ibanags or Cagayanes, and Zambales. The most important of these
are the Tagalogs, who number about a million and a half; the
Pampangans, about 400,000, excel in agriculture; the Bicols in
South-eastern Luzon were, according to Blumentritt, the first
Malays in the Philippines; the Pangasinans, in the province of
that name, number about 300,000; the Ilocanos, an industrious
race, occupy the north-western coast of Luzon; the Ibanags, said
to be the finest race and the most valiant men in the islands
(Sawyer), dwell in the Northern and Eastern Luzon. The Zambales
were famous head-hunters at the time of the Spanish conquest,
and made drinking-cups out of their enemies' skulls. They number
about 100,000. The Visayan Islands are inhabited by the Visayas,
the most numerous tribe of the Philippines. Fewer wild people
are found among them than in other portions of the archipelago.
The population is about 3,000,000. There is a strong
resemblance, mentally, morally, and physically, between
individuals of the Visayas, but there is a great difference in
their languages, a Visayan in Cebu, for instance will not
understand a Visayan of Panay. For all that, it is said that the
Filipinos had a common racial origin and at one time a common
language. Physically, the Filipinos are of medium height,
although tall men are to be found among them; especially in the
mountain districts. Generally speaking, they are of a brownish
colour, with black eyes, prominent cheek bones, the nose flat
rather than arched or straight, nostrils wide and full mouth
inclined to be large, lips full, good teeth, and round chin.
The following estimates of the Filipinos are selected from the
United States Census Report of 1903. The first gives an
appreciation of the people shortly after the arrival of the
Spaniards and before they were Christianized. The second and
third are the views of an American and an Englishman,
respectively, of the Christianized Filipino before and at the
time of the American occupation.
(1) Legaspi, after four years' residence, writes thus of the
natives of Cebu: "They are a crafty and treacherous race....They
are a people extremely vicious, fickle, untruthful, and full of
other superstitions. No law binds relative to relative, parents
to children, or brother to brother....If a man in some time of
need shelters a relative or a brother in his house, supports
him, and provides him with food for a few days, he will consider
that relative as his slave from that time on....At times they
sell their own children....Privateering and robbery have a
natural attraction to them....I believe that these natives could
be easily subdued by good treatment and the display of
kindness".
(2) Hon. Dean C. Worcester was in the Philippines in 1887-88 and
1890-93. He says: "The traveler cannot fail to be impressed by
his (the Filipino's) open-handed and cheerful hospitality. He
will go to any amount of trouble, and often to no little
expense, in order to accommodate some perfect stranger. If
cleanliness be next to godliness, he has much to recommend him.
Hardly less noticeable than the almost universal hospitality are
the well-regulated homes and the happy family life which one
soon finds to be the rule. Children are orderly, respectful, and
obedient to their parents. The native is self-respecting and
self-restrained to a remarkable degree....he is patient under
misfortune and forbearing under provocation....He is a kind
father and a dutiful son. His aged relatives are never left in
want, but are brought to his home and are welcome to share the
best that it affords to the end of their days".
(3) Frederick H. Sawyer lived for fourteen years in the
Philippines; he writes: "The Filipino possessed a great deal of
self-respect, and his demeanour is quiet and decorous. He is
polite to others and expects to be treated politely himself. He
is averse to rowdyism or horseplay of any kind, and avoids
giving offence. For an inhabitant of the tropics, he is fairly
industrious, sometimes even very hard-working. Those who have
seen him poling cascos against the stream of the Pasig will
admit this. He is a keen sportsman, and will readily put his
money on his favourite horse or gamecock; he is also addicted to
other forms of gambling. The position taken by women in a
community is often considered as a test of the degree of
civilization it has attained. Measured by this standard, the
Filipinos come out well, for among them the wife exerts great
influence in the family and the husband rarely completes any
important business without her concurrence.
"The Filipinos treat their children with great kindness and
forbearance. Those who are well-off show much anxiety to secure
a good education for their sons and even for their daughters.
Parental authority extends to the latest period in life. I have
seen a man of fifty years come as respectfully as a child to
kiss the hands of his aged parents when the vesper bell sounded,
and this notwithstanding the presence of several European
visitors in the house. Children, in return, show great respect
to both parents, and some morning and evening to kiss their
hands. They are trained in good manners from their earliest
youth, both by precept and example".
History. The islands were discovered 16 March, 1521, by
Ferdinand Magellan. Several other expeditions followed, but they
were fruitless. In 1564 Legaspi sailed from Mexico for the
Philippines. He was accompanied by the Augustinian friar
Urdaneta. As a layman this celebrated priest had accompanied the
expedition of Loaisa in 1524, which visited Mindanao and the
Moluccas. Legaspi landed in Cebu in 1565. The islands had been
called San Lazaro by Magellan; Villalobos, who commanded an
expedition from Mexico, called the island at which he touched
Filipina, in honour of Prince Philip. This name was extended to
the whole archipelago by Legaspi, who was sent out by the former
prince then ruling as Philip II.
Though there were not wanting indications of hostility and
distrust towards the Spaniards from the inhabitants of Cebu,
Legaspi succeeded in winning their friendship after a few
months. Later, in 1569, he removed the seat of government to
Iloilo. He sent his nephew Juan Salcedo to explore the islands
to the north. Salcedo's report to his uncle was favourable and
in 1571 Legaspi, leaving the affairs of government in the hands
of the natives, proceeded north and founded the city of Maynila,
later Manila. Legaspi immediately set about the organization of
the new colony; he appointed rulers of provinces, arranged for
yearly voyages to New Spain, and other matters pertaining to the
welfare of the country. In his work for pacification he was
greatly aided by the friars who were then beginning the work of
Christian civilization in the Philippines which was to go on for
several centuries. Legaspi died in 1574. To him belongs the
glory of founding the Spanish sovereignty in the islands. He was
succeeded by Lavezares. About this time, the Chinese pirate
Li-ma-hon invaded Luzon, with a fleet of over sixty vessels and
about 6000 people. A storm that met the fleet as it neared
Manila wrecked some of his boats, but Li-ma-hon proceeded on his
journey and landed 1500 men. Repulsed in two attacks by the
Spaniards, Li-ma-hon went north and settled in Pangasinan
province. The following year (1575) Salcedo was sent against
them; he defeated them and drove the fleeing Chinese into the
mountains.
A few years later the arrival of the first bishop is chronicled,
the Dominican Salazar, one of the greatest figures in the
history of the Philippines; he was accompanied by a few Jesuits
(1581). The Augustinians had come with Legaspi, the Franciscans
arrived in 1577, and the Dominicans in 1587. By unanimous vote
of the entire colony the Jesuit Sanchez was sent to Spain to
explain to Philip II the true state of affairs in the islands.
His mission was entirely successful; Philip was persuaded to
retain his new possessions, which many of his advisers were
counseling him to relinquish. In 1591 an ambassador came from
Japan demanding that tribute be paid that country. This the new
governor Dasmarinas refused, but the drew up a treaty instead
that was satisfactory to both parties. An expedition that
started out against the Moluccas in 1593 ended disastrously. On
the voyage some of the Chinese crew mutinied, killed Dasmarinas
and took the ship to China. Dasmarinas built the fortress of
Santiago, Manila, and fortified the city with stone walls. He
was succeeded by his son Luis. During his governorship the
convent of Santa Isabel, a school and home for children of
Spanish soldiers was founded (1594). It exists to this day. The
Audiencia or Supreme Court was re-established about this time.
As it was appointed from Mexico and supported from the islands
it had proved too great a drain on the resources of the colony,
and so had been suppressed after the visit of the Jesuit Sanchez
to Philip II. The last years of the sixteenth and the beginning
of the seventeenth centuries were marked by the seizure, by the
Japanese, of the richly-laden Spanish vessel from the islands.
It had sought shelter in a storm in a port of that country. The
crew were put to death. Then there was a fruitless expedition
against Cambodia; a naval fight against two Dutch pirate-ships,
one of which was captured; and a conspiracy of the Chinese
against the Spaniards. The force of the latter, 130 in number,
was defeated, and every man of them decapitated. The Chinese
were repulsed later, and it is said that 23,000 of them were
killed. The Recollect Fathers arrived in Manila in 1606.
During the first half of the seventeenth century the colony had
to struggle against internal and external foes; the Dutch in
particular, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Moros, the natives of
Bohol, Leyte, and Cagayan. A severe earthquake destroyed Manila
in 1645. In spite of the difficulties against which the islands
had to struggle, the work of the evangelization went rapidly
forward. The members of the various religious orders, with a
heroism rarely paralleled even in the annals of Christian
missions, penetrated farther and farther into the interior of
the country, and established their missions in what had been
centres of Paganism. The natives were won by the
self-sacrificing lives of the missionaries, and accepted the
teachings of Christianity in great numbers. Books were written
in the native dialects, schools were everywhere established, and
every effort employed for the material and moral improvement of
the people. From the time of the fearless Salazar, the
missionaries had always espoused the cause of the natives
against the injustices and exactions of the individual rulers.
It is not strange, therefore, that trouble arose at times
between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. As these
misunderstandings grew from the mistakes of individuals, they
were not of long duration, and they did not in any way interfere
with the firmer control of the islands which Spain was year by
year obtaining, or with the healthy growth of the Church
throughout the archipelago.
Spanish sovereignty in the Philippines was threatened by the
capture of Manila by the British under Draper in 1762. There
were only 600 Spanish soldiers to resist a force of 6000 British
with their Indian allies. Their depredations were so dreadful
that Draper put a stop to them after three days. The city
remained under British sovereignty until 1764.
There were several uprisings by the natives during the beginning
of the nineteenth century. One of the most serious of these was
that headed by Apolinario de la Cruz, who called himself King of
the Tagalogs. By attributing to himself supernatural power, he
gathered about him a large number of deluded fanatics, men,
women, and children. He was apprehended and put to death. An
event of great importance was the introduction in 1860 of
shallow-draught steel gunboats to be used against the piratical
Moros of Mindanao. For centuries they had ravaged the Visayan
islands, carrying off annually about a thousand prisoners. A
severe earthquake in Manila in 1863 destroyed the chief public
buildings, the cathedral, and other churches, except that of San
Agustin.
Some native clergy participated in a serious revolt against
Spanish authority which occurred in Cavite in 1872. Three
Filipino priests who were implicated in the uprising, Gomez,
Zamora, and Burgos, were executed. It is said that the spirit of
insurrection which manifested itself so strongly during the last
quarter of the nineteenth century was the result of the
establishment of certain secret societies. The first Masonic
lodge of the Philippines was founded in Cavite in 1860. Lodges
were later formed at Zamboanga (in Mindanao), Manila, and Cebu.
Europeans only were admitted at first, but afterwards natives
were received. The lodges were founded by anti-clericals, and
naturally anti-clericals flocked largely to the standard. There
was no idea then of separation from the mother country, but only
of a more liberal form of government. After the insurrection at
Cavite in 1872, the Spanish Masons separated themselves from the
revolutionary ones. New societies were gradually formed, the
most celebrated being the Liga Filipina, founded by the popular
hero Dr. Rizal. Practically all the members were Masons, and men
of means and education.
A more powerful society and a powerful factor in the
insurrection of 1896, recalling the American Ku Klux Klan, was
the Katipunan. Its symbol KKK was literally anti-Spanish, for
there is no K in Spanish. The full title of the society was "The
Sovereign Worshipful Association of the Sons of the Country".
The members (from 10,000 to 50,000) were poor people who
subscribed little sums monthly for the purchase of arms, etc.
Later a woman's lodge was organized. According to Sawyer "the
Katipunan adopted some of the Masonic paraphernalia, and some of
its initiatory ceremonies, but were in no sense Masonic lodges"
(p.83). In 1896 another insurrection broke out near Manila, in
Cavite province. Aguinaldo, a young school teacher, became
prominent about this time. The spirit of revolt spread through
the neighbouring provinces; there were several engagements,
until finally, Aguinaldo, at the head of the remnant of rebels,
left Cavite and took refuge near Angat in the Province of
Bulacan. As it would have taken a long time to dislodge them, a
method of conciliation was adopted. The result was the pact of
Biak-na-bato, signed 14 Dec., 1897. By the terms of this
agreement the Filipinos were not to plot against Spanish
sovereignty for a period of three years; Aguinaldo and other
followers were to be deported, for a period to be fixed by
Spain. In return they were to receive the sum of $500,000 as
indemnity; and those who had not taken up arms were to be given
$350,000 as reimbursement for the losses they had incurred. The
leaders of the insurrection of 1896 exercised despotic power,
and ill-treated and robbed those of their countrymen who would
not join them. Andres Bonifacio, the president of the Katipunan,
ultimately became a victim of these despots. Thirty thousand
Filipinos are reported to have lost their lives in the rebellion
of 1896.
In 1898 hostilities broke out between Spain and the United
States. On 24 April, 1898, Aguinaldo met the American Consul at
Singapore, Mr. Pratt; two days later he proceeded to Hong Kong.
The American squadron under Commodore (now Admiral) Dewey
destroyed the Spanish ships in Manila Bay. Aguinaldo and
seventeen followers landed at Cavite from the United States
vessel Hugh McCullough and were furnished arms by Dewey.
Aguinaldo proclaimed dictatorial government, and asked
recognition from foreign powers. The American troops took Manila
on 13 August. A treaty of peace was signed at Paris by the terms
of which the Philippines were ceded to the United States, and
the latter paid Spain the sum of $20,000,000. It was later
discovered that certain islands near Borneo were not included in
the boundaries fixed by the peace commission. These were also
ceded to the United States, which paid an additional $100,000.
The Filipinos had organized a government of their own, the
capital being Malolos, in the Province of Bulacan. Fighting
between them and the Americans began on 4 Feb., 1899; but by the
end of the year, all organized opposition was practically at an
end. Aguinaldo was captured in April, 1901, and on 1 July of the
same year the insurrection was declared to be extinct, the
administration was turned over to the civil Government, and
Judge Taft (now President) was appointed governor.
American Government: General. The Spanish laws remain in force
to-day, except as changed by military order, Act of Congress, or
Act of the Philippine Commission. The first Philippine
Commission was appointed by President McKinley Jan., 1899. The
second Philippine Commission was sent to the islands in 1900.
Its object was to establish a civil government based on the
recommendations of the first commission. The principles that
were to guide this commission are thus expressed in the
following instructions given them: "The Commission should bear
in mind that the government that they are establishing is
designed not for our satisfaction or for the expression of our
theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity
of the people of the Philippine Islands, and the measures
adopted should be made to conform to their customs, their
habits, and even their prejudices, to the fullest extent
consistent with the indispensable requisites of just and
effective government." "No laws shall be made respecting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof, and that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious
profession and worship without discrimination or preference
shall for ever be allowed." This was confirmed by Act of
Congress 1 July, 1902, in almost identical words (section 5).
The members of the commission are appointed by the president,
with the consent of the Senate; their tenure of office is at the
pleasure of the president. There are nine commissioners, one of
whom is the governor-general (the chief executive of the
Philippine Islands), and four are secretaries of the departments
of the Interior, of Commerce and Police, of Finance and Justice,
and of Public Instruction. Each of these departments is divided
into bureaus of which there are twenty-three in all. Through
these the actual administration of the affairs of the Government
is carried on.
On 16 Oct., 1907, the Philippine Assembly was inaugurated. The
assembly shares legislative power with the commission over all
parts of the islands "not inhabited by the Moros or other
non-Christian tribes". Over the Moros and the non-Christian
tribes the commission alone has power. The legislative power of
the commission and assembly over the Christian tribes is equal.
No law may be made without the approval of both houses. If at
any session the annual appropriation for the support of the
Government shall not have been made, an amount equal to the last
annual appropriation is considered thereby appropriated for the
ensuing year. The members of the assembly are elected by popular
vote. The right to this suffrage is extended to all male
citizens of the Philippine Islands or of the United States, over
twenty-three years of age, who possess at least one of the
following qualifications: (1) ability to speak, read, and write
English or Spanish; (2) ownership of real property to the value
of $250 or the payment of $15 annually of the established taxes;
(3) holding of municipal office under the Spanish Government in
the Philippines. All acts passed by the commission and by the
assembly are enacted by the authority of the United States
Congress, which reserves the power and authority to annul them.
The assembly may consist of not less than fifty nor more than a
hundred members. Each province is entitled to one delegate; and
if its population is more than 90,000, to an additional member
for every extra 90,000 and major fraction thereof. There are at
present eighty delegates, Manila is counted as a province.
Thirty-one delegates are from the Visayan Islands, and
forty-four from Luzon. The commission and assembly are
authorized to send two commissioners to the United States to
represent the interests of the Philippines at Washington.
American Government: Provincial. According to their form of
government, the islands are divided into three classes: the
Christian provinces, the non-Christian provinces, and the Moro
provinces. The officers of the Christian province are the
governor, the treasurer, the third member of the provincial
board, and the fiscal or district attorney. The governor and
third member are elected to office; the treasurer and fiscal are
appointed by the governor of the Philippine Islands with the
consent of the Commission; the tenure of their office depends
upon the governor-general. Any provincial officer may be
suspended or removed from office by the governor-general for
sufficient cause. The provincial governor, the treasurer, and
the third member form the provincial board, which legislates in
a limited way for the province. The non-Christian tribes are
under a governor, secretary, treasurer, supervisor and fiscal.
In some provinces there is also a lieutenant-governor. These
officers are appointed by the governor-general with the consent
of the commission. The Moro province includes the greater part
of Mindanao, the whole of the Sulu Archipelago, and smaller
groups of islands. The inhabitants number 500,000, half of them
Moros; the remainder, with the exception of some thousand
Christians, are wild tribes. The Government of the Moro province
is civil-military. It is divided into five districts, each with
its governor and secretary, appointed by the governor of the
province. On the legislative council of the entire province
there is, besides the governor, a secretary, treasurer, and
attorney. While the governor-general appoints these officers,
the two first named are usually officers of the United States
army detailed for this purpose. The district officers are also
usually detailed from the army.
Courts of Justice. There is no trial by jury in the Philippine
Islands. There are three classes of courts of justice:
justice-of-the-peace courts, courts of first instance, and the
supreme court; a justice of the peace must be at least
twenty-three years of age. he is appointed by the governor from
a number of individuals whose names are presented by a judge of
the court of first instance, and by the director of education.
Among his powers is that of performing marriage ceremonies. The
courts of first instance try appeals from the lower court and
cases in which they have original jurisdiction. These judges are
appointed by the governor with the approval of the commission.
Supreme Court. This court is composed of one chief justice and
six associates. Important cases may be appealed from it to the
Supreme Court of the United States. The supreme court rarely
hears witnesses, but examines the written testimony made before
the lower court, and listens to arguments of the opposing
lawyers. The supreme court may not merely reverse or affirm the
decision of the lower court, but it may even change the degree
and kind of punishment. A defendant, for instance, sentenced to
imprisonment for life or for twenty years may, and sometimes
does, have his sentence changed on appeal to the supreme court
to the death penalty.
Religion. Before the arrival of the Spaniards the religion of
the islands was similar to that of the majority of the Chinese,
Japanese, and Malayans. They were worshippers of the souls of
their ancestors, of the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, birds,
and animals. Among the deities of the Tagalogs were: a blue
bird, called Bathala (divinity); the crow, called Maylupa (lord
of the earth); the alligator, called Nono (grandfather). They
adored in common with other Malayans the tree Balete, which they
did not dare cut. They had idols in their houses, called anito,
and by the Visayans, diuata. There were anitos of the country
who permitted them to pass over it; anitos of the fields who
gave fertility to the soil; anitos of the sea who fed the fishes
and guarded boats; and anitos to look after the house and
newly-born infants. The anitos were supposed to be the souls of
their ancestors. Their story of the origin of the world was that
the sky and the water were walking together; a kite came between
them, and in order to keep the waters from rising to the sky,
placed upon them the islands, the Filipinos' idea of the world.
The origin of man came about in the following manner: a piece of
bamboo was floating on the water; the water cast it at the feet
of a kite; the kite in anger broke the bamboo with its beak; out
of one piece came man, and out of the other woman. The souls of
the dead were supposed to feed on rice and tuba (a native
liquor), thus food was placed at the graves of the dead, a
custom which still survives among some of the uncivilized tribes
of Mindanao.
The ministers of religion were priestesses -- crafty and
diabolical old women, who offered sacrifices of animals and even
of human beings. Sacrifices of animals still occur among the
tribes; and accounts of recent human sacrifice will be found in
the reports of the Philippine Commission. The superstitions of
the Filipinos were numerous. In Supreme Case no. 5381 there is
given the testimony of Igorottes, who before starting to murder
a man, a couple of years ago, killed some chickens and examined
their entrails to discover if the time was favourable for the
slaying of a man. The hooting of owls, the hissing of lizards,
and the sight of a serpent had a supernatural signification. One
of the most feared of the evil spirits was the asuang, which was
supposed to capture children or lonely travelers. A fuller
description of these superstitions is given in Delgado,
"Historia General de las Islas Filipinas" (Manila, 1894), bk.
III, xvi, xvii, and in Blumentritt, "Mythological Dictionary".
As might be expected from idolatrous tribes in a tropical
climate, the state of morality was low; wives were bought and
sold, and children did not hesitate to enslave their own
parents. It was on material such as this that the Spanish
missionaries had to work. A Christian Malay race, a people that
from the lower grade of savagery had advanced to the highest
form of civilization, was the result of their efforts.
Up to the year 1896 the Augustinians had founded 242 towns, with
a population of more than 2,000,000. There were 310 religious of
the order; this includes (and the same applies to the following
figures) lay brothers, students, and invalids. The Franciscans
number 455 in 153 towns, with a population of a little more than
a million; there were 206 Dominicans in 69 towns, with about
700,000 inhabitants; 192 Recollects in 194 towns, with a
population of 1,175,000; 167 Jesuits who ministered to about
200,000 Christians in the missions of Mindanao. The total
religious therefore in 1906 was 1330 to look after a Catholic
population of more than 5,000,000 while secular clergy were in
charge of nearly a million more. The members of the religious
orders in the Philippines in 1906 did not amount to 500. The
condition of the Filipino people, as they were prior to the
revolution of 1896, forms the best argument in favour of the
labours of the religious orders. The islands were not conquered
by force; the greater part of the fighting was to protect the
natives from enemies from without. It was not until 1822 that
there was a garrison of Spanish troops in the archipelago. And,
as all impartial historians admit, the small number of troops
needed was due solely to the religious influence of the priests
over the people. The total strength of American regiments in the
Philippines in 1910, including the Philippine Scouts, was
17,102. To this should be added more than 4000 members of the
Philippine Constabulary, a military police necessary for the
maintenance of order.
Besides their far-reaching influence for peace, the religious
orders did notable work in literature and science. Father Manuel
Blance, an Augustinian, was the author of "Flora Filipina", a
monumental work in four folio volumes, illustrated with hundreds
of coloured plates reproduced from water-colour paintings of the
plants of the Philippines. Father Rodrigo Aganduru Moriz, a
Recollect (Augustinian Discalced), (1584-1626), after
evangelizing the natives of Bataan, and founding houses of his
order in Manila and Cebu, and missions in Mindanao, set sail
from the Philippines. He spent some time in Persia, where he
brought back numerous schismatics to the Faith and converted
many infidels. Arriving in Rome, Urban VIII wished to send him
back to Persia as Apostolic delegate with some religious of his
order, but he died a few months later at the age of forty-two.
Among his works are: "A General History of the Philippines", in
two volumes; "The Persecution in Japan"; a book of sermons; a
grammar and dictionary of a native dialect; "Origin of the
Oriental Empires"; "Chronology of Oriental Kings and Kingdoms";
a narrative of his travels written for Urban VIII; a collection
of maps of various islands, seas, and provinces; the work of the
Augustinians (Discalced) in the conversion of the Philippines
and of Japan; a family book of medicine for the use of
Filipinos.
The number of Augustinian authors alone, until 1780 was 131, and
the books published by them more than 200 in nine native
dialects, more than 100 in Spanish, besides a number of volumes
in the Chinese and Japanese languages. How extensive and how
varied were the missionary, literary, and scientific works of
the members of the religious orders may be gathered from their
chronicles. The Philippines constitute an ecclesiastical
province, of which the Archbishop of Manila is the metropolitan.
The suffragan sees are: Jaro; Nueva Caceres; Nueva Segovia;
Cebu, Calbayog; Lipa; Tuguegarao; Zamboanga; and the Prefecture
Apostolic of Palawan. There are over a thousand priests, and a
Catholic population of 6,000,000. (See Cebu; Jaro; Manila,
Archdiocese of; Manila Observatory; Nueva Caceres; Nueva
Segovia; Palawan; Samar and Leyte; Tuguegarao; Zamboanga.)
The Diocese of Lipa (Lipensis). The Diocese of Lipa, erected 10
April, 1910, comprises the Provinces of Batangas, La Laguna,
Tayabas (with the Districts of Infanta and Principe), Mindoro,
and the sub-Province of Marinduque, formerly parts of the
Archdiocese of Manila. Rt. Rev Joseph Petrelli, D.D., the first
bishop, was appointed 12 April, 1910, and consecrated at Manila,
12 June, 1910. There are 95 parishes; the Discalced Augustinians
have charge of 14, and the Capuchins of 6. The diocese comprises
12,208 sq.m.; about 640,000 Christians; and 9000 non-Christians.
Aglipayanism. The Aglipayano sect caused more annoyance than
damage to the Church in the Philippines. The originator of the
schism was a native priest, Gregorio Aglipay. He was employed as
a servant in the Augustinian house, Manila, and being of
ingratiating manners was educated and ordained priest. Later he
took the field as an insurgent general. Being hard pressed by
the American troops he surrendered and was paroled in 1901. In
1902 he arrogated himself the title of "Pontifex Maximus", and
through friendship or fear drew to his allegiance some native
priests. Those of the latter who were his friends he nominated
"bishops". Simeon Mandac, one of the two lay pillars of the
movement, is now serving a term of twenty years in the
penitentiary for murder and rebellion. At first the schism
seemed to make headway in the north, chiefly for political
reasons. With the restoration of the churches under order of the
Supreme Court in 1906-07 the schism began to dwindle, and its
adherents are now inconsiderable.
Religious Policy of the Government. Freedom of worship and
separation of Church and State is a principle of the American
Government. In a country where there was the strictest union of
Church and State for more than three centuries, this policy is
not without serious difficulties. At times ignorant officials
may act as if the Church must be separated from her rights as a
lawful corporation existing in the State. In some such way as
this several Catholic churches were seized, with the connivance
or the open consent of municipal officers, by adherents of the
Aglipayano sect. It required time and considerable outlay of
money for the Church to regain possession of her property
through the courts. And even then the aggressors often succeeded
in damaging as much as possible the church buildings or its
belongings before surrendering them. There is no distinction or
privilege accorded clergymen, except that they are precluded
from being municipal councilors. However: "there shall be exempt
from taxation burying grounds, church and their adjacent
parsonages or convents, and lands and buildings used exclusively
for religious charitable, scientific, or educational purposes
and not for private profit". This does not apply to land or
buildings owned by the Church to procure revenue for religious
purposes, e.g. the support of a hospital, orphan asylum, etc.,
so that glebe land is taxable. The only exception made in the
matter of free imports for church purposes is that Bibles and
hymn books are admitted free of duty. Practically everything
needed in the services of the Catholic Church, vestments, sacred
vessels, altars, statues, pictures, etc. pay duty, if such goods
are not purchased from or manufactured in the United States.
Religious corporations or associations, of whatever sect or
denomination, were authorized to hold land by an act of the
commission passed in October, 1901.
In April, 1906, the law of corporations came into force. Under
this Act (no. 1459) a bishop, chief, priest, or presiding elder
of any religious denomination, can become a corporation sole by
filing articles of incorporation holding property in trust for
the denomination. Authority is also given to any religious
society or order, or any diocese, synod, or organization to
incorporate under specified conditions to administer its
temporalities. The same act empowers colleges and institutes of
learning to incorporate. All cemeteries are under the control of
the Bureau of Health. By an Act passed in Feb., 1906, existing
cemeteries and burial grounds were to be closed unless
authorized by the director of health; municipalities were
empowered, subject to the same authority, to set apart land for
a municipal burial ground, and to make by-laws without
discriminating against race, nationality, or religion. The
church burial grounds had generally to be enlarged or new ones
consecrated, and individual graves indicated and allotted. The
right to hold public funerals and to take the remains into
church was not to be abridged or interfered with, except in
times of epidemics or in case of contagious or infectious
diseases, when a public funeral might be held at the grave after
an hour had elapsed from the actual interment. The right of
civil marriage was established in 1898, by order of General
Otis. The certificate of marriage, by whomsoever celebrated,
must be filed with the civil authorities. The forbidden degrees
extend to half-blood and step-parents. A subsequent marriage
while husband or wife is alive is illegal and void, unless the
former marriage has been annulled or dissolved, or by
presumption of death after seven years' absence. There is no
express provision for divorce; but marriages may be annulled by
order of judges of the court of first instance for impediments
existing at the time of marriage, such as being under the age of
consent (fourteen years for boys, twelve years for girls),
insanity, etc.
The local health officer shall report to the municipal president
"all births that may come to his knowledge", the date, and names
of parents. The parochial clergy have generally complete and
carefully-kept registers of baptisms, and furnish certified
copies to those who need them. The property of deceased persons
was in general formerly distributed at a family council, with
the approval of the courts. But it appears that at the present
time the estates of deceased persons must be administered under
direction of the courts of first instance. Testaments are made
and property devolves in accordance with the provisions of the
Spanish civil code.
Education. The Spanish missionaries established schools
immediately on reaching the islands. Wherever they penetrated,
church and school went together. The Jesuits had two
universities in Manila, besides colleges at Cavite, Marinduque,
Arevalo, Cebu, and Zamboanga. The Dominicans had their
flourishing University of S. Tomas, Manila, existing to this
day, and their colleges in other large towns. There was no
Christian village without its school; all the young people
attended. On the Jesuits' return to the islands in 1859, the
cause of higher education received a new impetus. They
established the college of the Ateneo de Manila, where nearly
all those who have been prominent in the history of their
country during the last half-century were educated. They opened
a normal school which sent its trained Filipino teachers over
all parts of the islands. The normal school graduated during the
thirty years of its existence 1948 teachers. After the American
occupation a public-school system, modeled on that of the United
States, was established by the Government. The total number of
schools in operation for 1909-10 was 4531, an increase of 107
over the preceding year. The total annual enrolment was 587,317,
plus 4946 in the schools of the Moro Province. The average
monthly enrolment however was 427,165 and the average monthly
attendance only 337,307; of these, 2300 were pupils of secondary
schools, 15,487 of intermediate schools and 319,520 of primary
schools. There were 732 American teachers, 8130 Filipino
teachers, and 145 Filipino apprentices -- teachers who serve
without pay.
Act 74, sec. 16, provides: "No teacher or other person shall
teach or criticize the doctrines of any church, religious sect,
or denomination, or shall attempt to influence pupils for or
against any church or religious sect in any public school. If
any teacher shall intentionally violate this section he or she
shall, after due hearing, be dismissed from the public service;
provided: however, that it shall be lawful for the priest or
minister of any church established in the town wherein a public
school is situated, either in person or by a designated teacher
of religion, to teach for one-half hour three times a week, in
the school building, to those public-school pupils whose parents
or guardians desire it and express their desire therefor in
writing filed with the principal teacher of the school, to be
forwarded to the division superintendent, who shall fix the
hours and rooms for such teaching. But no public-school teachers
shall either conduct religious exercises, or teach religion, or
act as a designated religious teacher in the school building
under the foregoing authority, and no pupil shall be required by
any public-school teacher to attend and receive the religious
instruction herein permitted. Should the opportunity thus given
to teach religion be used by the priest, minister, or religious
teacher for the purpose of arousing disloyalty to the United
States, or of discouraging the attendance of pupils at any such
public school, or creating a disturbance of public order, or of
interfering with the discipline of the school, the division
superintendent, subject to the approval of the director of
education, may, after due investigation and hearing, forbid such
offending priest, minister, or religious teacher from entering
the public-school building thereafter."
That the religion of the Filipino people must inevitably suffer
from the present system of education is evident to anyone
conversant with existing conditions. To the religious
disadvantages common to the public school of the United States
must be added the imitative habit characteristic of the
Filipino, and the proselytizing efforts of American Protestant
missionaries. The place in which the greatest amount of harm can
be done to the religion of the Filipino is the secondary school.
Despite the best intentions on the part of the Government, the
very fact that the vast majority of the American teachers in
these schools are not Catholics incapacitates a great number of
them from giving the Catholic interpretation of points of
history connected with the Reformation, the preaching of
indulgences, the reading of the Bible, etc. Accustomed to
identify his religion and his Government, the step towards
concluding that the American Government must be a Protestant
Government is an easy one for the young Filipino. Further, as
the secondary schools are only situated in the provincial
capitals, the students leave home to live in the capital of
their province. It is among these young people particularly that
the American Protestant missionary works. Even though he does
not make the student a member of this or that particular sect, a
spirit of indifferentism is generated which does not bode well
for the future of the country, temporally or spiritually. A
nation that is only three centuries distant from habits of
idolatry and savagery cannot be removed from daily religious
education and still be expected to prosper. That the majority of
the Filipino people desires a Christian education for their
children may be seen from this, that the Catholic colleges,
academics, and school established in all the dioceses are
overcrowded. For the present, and for many years to come, the
majority of Filipinos cannot afford to pay a double school tax,
and hence must accept the educational system imposed upon them
by the United States.
PHILIP M. FINEGAN
Philippopolis, Titular Metropolitan of
Philippopolis
A titular metropolitan see of Thracia Secunda. The city was
founded by Philip of Macedon in 342 b.c. on the site of the
legendary Eumolpins. As he sent thither 2000 culprits in
addition to the colony of veterans, the town was for some time
known as Poniropolis as well as by its official designation.
During Alexander's expedition, the entire country fell again
under the sway of Seuthes III, King of the Odrysians, and it was
only in 313 that the Hellenic supremacy was re-established by
Lysimachus. In 200 b.c. the Thracians, for a brief interval it
is true, drove back the Macedonian garrisons; later they passed
under the protectorate and afterwards the domination of Rome in
the time of Tiberius, The city was now called Trimontium, but
only for a very short time (Pliny, "Hist. Nat.", IV, xviii).
From the reign of Septimius Severus, Philippopolis bears the
title of metropolis on coins and in inscriptions. It was there
that the conventus of Thrace assembled. In 172 Marcus Aurelius
fortified the city with walls; in 248 Philip granted it the
title of colony, two years before its destruction by the Goths,
who slaughtered 100,000 men there (Ammianus Marcellinus, XXVI,
x). Restored again, it became the metropolis of Thracia Secunda.
The exact date of the establishment of Christianity in this town
is unknown; the oldest testimony, quite open to criticism,
however, is in connexion with thirty-seven martyrs, whose feast
is celebrated on 20 August, and who are said to have been
natives of Philippopolis, though other towns of Thrace are
frequently given as their native place. In 344 was held at
Philippopolis the conciliabulum of the Eusebians, which brought
together 76 bishops separated from their colleagues of Sardica,
or Sofia, and adversaries of St. Athanasius and his friends.
Among its most celebrated ancient metropolitans is Silvanus, who
asked the Patriarch Proclus to transfer him to Troas on account
of the severity of the climate, and whose name was inserted by
Baronius in the Roman Martyrology for 2 December. Philippopolis,
which from the fifth century at the latest was the
ecclesiastical metropolis of Thracia Secunda and dependent on
the Patriarchate of Constantinople, had three suffragan
bishoprics in the middle of the seventh century (Gelzer,
"Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum", 542); in
the tenth century it had ten (ibid., 577); towards the end of
the fifteenth century it had none (ibid.). The Greek
metropolitan see has continued to exist, in spite of the
occupation of the Bulgarians. The latter, however, have erected
there an orthodox metropolitan see of their own. Though
generally held by the Byzantines Philippopolis was often
captured by other peoples -- Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgarians, and
the Franks who retained it from 1204 till 1235. It was taken by
the Turks in 1370 and finally came under the sway of the
Bulgarians in 1885. By transporting thither on several occasions
Armenian and Syrian colonists, the Byzantines made it an
advanced fortress to oppose the Bulgarians; unfortunately these
colonists were nearly all Monophysites and especially
Paulicians, so the city became the great centre of Manichaeism
in the Middle Ages. These heretics converted by the Capuchins in
the seventeenth century have become fervent Catholics of the
Latin rite. The city called Plovdif in Bulgarian contains at
present 47,000 inhabitants, of whom about 4000 are Catholics.
The Greeks and Turks are fairly numerous; the Catholic parish is
in charge of secular priests; there is a seminary, which however
has only from 20 to 25 students. The Assumptionists, who number
about 30, have had since 1884 a college with a commercial
department, attended by 250 pupils; the primary school for boys
was established in 1863 by the Assumptionist Sisters; the
Sisters of St. Joseph have a boarding-school and a primary
school for girls; the Sisters of Charity of Agram have an
hospital.
LE QUIEN, Oriens. christ., I, 1155-62; TSOUKALAS, Description
historico-geographique de l'eparchie de Philippopolis (Vienna,
1851), in Greek; MUeLLER, Ptolemoei Geographia, I (Paris), 483;
JIRECEK, Das Fuerstenthum Bulgarien (Prague, 1891), 378-87;
DUPUY-PEYOU, La Bulgarie aux Bulgares (Paris, 1896), 142-8,
291-8; Revue franco-bulgare (1910), 10-18.
S. VAILHE.
Philippopolis
Philippopolis
Titular see in Arabia, suffragan of Bostra. Its bishop,
Hormisdas, was present at the Council of Chalcedon in 451
(LeQuien, "Oriens christianus", II, 861). An inscription makes
known another bishop, Basil, in 553 ("Echos d'Orient", XII,
1909, 103). Philippopolis figures as a see in the "Notitiae
Episcopatuum" in the sixth century (op. cit., X, 1907, 145).
There were also several titular bishops in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries (Eubel, "Hierarchia catholica medii aevi",
II, 238; III, 291). The ancient name of this place is unknown.
The Emperor Philip (244-9) founded this town and gave it his
name (Aurelius Victor, "De Caesar.", 28). Thenceforth it grew
very rapidly as evidenced by the fine ruins, remains of the
colonnades of a temple and colossal baths, discovered on its
site at Shohba in the Hauran.
WADDINGTON, Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en
Grece et en Asie Mineure, 490-3; GELZER, Georgii Cyprii
Descriptio orbis romani, 204; Revue biblique, VII (1898), 601-3;
Echos d'Orient, II (1899), 175.
S. VAILHE
St. Philip Romolo Neri
St. Philip Romolo Neri
THE APOSTLE OF ROME.
Born at Florence, Italy, 22 July, 1515; died 27 May, 1595.
Philip's family originally came from Castelfranco but had lived
for many generations in Florence, where not a few of its members
had practised the learned professions, and therefore took rank
with the Tuscan nobility. Among these was Philip's own father,
Francesco Neri, who eked out an insufficient private fortune
with what he earned as a notary. A circumstance which had no
small influence on the life of the saint was Francesco's
friendship with the Dominicans; for it was from the friars of S.
Marco, amid the memories of Savonarola, that Philip received
many of his early religious impressions. Besides a younger
brother, who died in early childhood, Philip had two younger
sisters, Caterina and Elisabetta. It was with them that "the
good Pippo", as he soon began to be called, committed his only
known fault. He gave a slight push to Caterina, because she kept
interrupting him and Elisabetta, while they were reciting psalms
together, a practice of which, as a boy, he was remakably fond.
One incident of his childhood is dear to his early biographers
as the first visible intervention of Providence on his behalf,
and perhaps dearer still to his modern disciples, because it
reveals the human characteristics of a boy amid the supernatural
graces of a saint. When about eight years old he was left alone
in a courtyard to amuse himself; seeing a donkey laden with
fruit, he jumped on its back; the beast bolted, and both tumbled
into a deep cellar. His parents hastened to the spot and
extricated the child, not dead, as they feared, but entirely
uninjured.
From the first it was evident that Philip's career would run on
no conventional lines; when shown his family pedigree he tore it
up, and the burning of his father's house left him unconcerned.
Having studied the humanities under the best scholars of a
scholarly generation, at the age of sixteen he was sent to help
his father's cousin in business at S. Germano, near Monte
Cassino. He applied himself with diligence, and his kinsman soon
determined to make him his heir. But he would often withdraw for
prayer to a little mountain chapel belonging to the Benedictines
of Monte Cassino, built above the harbour of Gaeta in a cleft of
rock which tradition says was among those rent at the hour of
Our Lord's death. It was here that his vocation became definite:
he was called to be the Apostle of Rome. In 1533 he arrived in
Rome without any money. He had not informed his father of the
step he was taking, and he had deliberately cut himself off from
his kinsman's patronage. He was, however, at once befriended by
Galeotto Caccia, a Florentine resident, who gave him a room in
his house and an allowance of flour, in return for which he
undertook the education of his two sons. For seventeen years
Philip lived as a layman in Rome, probably without thinking of
becoming a priest. It was perhaps while tutor to the boys, that
he wrote most of the poetry which he composed both in Latin and
in Italian. Before his death he burned all his writings, and
only a few of his sonnets have come down to us. He spent some
three years, beginning about 1535, in the study of philosophy at
the Sapienza, and of theology in the school of the Augustinians.
When he considered that he had learnt enough, he sold his books,
and gave the price to the poor. Though he never again made study
his regular occupation, whenever he was called upon to cast
aside his habitual reticence, he would surprise the most learned
with the depth and clearness of his theological knowledge.
He now devoted himself entirely to the sanctification of his own
soul and the good of his neighbour. His active apostolate began
with solitary and unobtrusive visits to the hospitals. Next he
induced others to accompany him. Then he began to frequent the
shops, warehouses, banks, and public places of Rome, melting the
hearts of those whom he chanced to meet, and exhorting them to
serve God. In 1544, or later, he became the friend of St.
Ignatius. Many of his disciples tried and found their vocations
in the infant Society of Jesus; but the majority remained in the
world, and formed the nucleus of what afterwards became the
Brotherhood of the Little Oratory. Though he "appeared not
fasting to men", his private life was that of a hermit. His
single daily meal was of bread and water, to which a few herbs
were sometimes added, the furniture of his room consisted of a
bed, to which he usually preferred the floor, a table, a few
chairs, and a rope to hang his clothes on; and he disciplined
himself frequently with small chains. Tried by fierce
temptations, diabolical as well as human, he passed through them
all unscathed, and the purity of his soul manifested itself in
certain striking physical traits. He prayed at first mostly in
the church of S. Eustachio, hard by Caccia's house. Next he took
to visiting the Seven Churches. But it was in the catacomb of S.
Sebastiano -- confounded by early biographers with that of S.
Callisto -- that he kept the longest vigils and received the
most abundant consolations. In this catacomb, a few days before
Pentecost in 1544, the well-known miracle of his heart took
place. Bacci describes it thus: "While he was with the greatest
earnestness asking of the Holy Ghost His gifts, there appeared
to him a globe of fire, which entered into his mouth and lodged
in his breast; and thereupon he was suddenly surprised with such
a fire of love, that, unable to bear it, he threw himself on the
ground, and, like one trying to cool himself, bared his breast
to temper in some measure the flame which he felt. When he had
remained so for some time, and was a little recovered, he rose
up full of unwonted joy, and immediately all his body began to
shake with a violent tremour; and putting his hand to his bosom,
he felt by the side of his heart, a swelling about as big as a
man's fist, but neither then nor afterwards was it attended with
the slightest pain or wound." The cause of this swelling was
discovered by the doctors who examined his body after death. The
saint's heart had been dilated under the sudden impulse of love,
and in order that it might have sufficient room to move, two
ribs had been broken, and curved in the form of an arch. From
the time of the miracle till his death, his heart would
palpitate violently whenever he performed any spiritual action.
During his last years as a layman, Philip's apostolate spread
rapidly. In 1548, together with his confessor, Persiano Rosa, he
founded the Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity for looking
after pilgrims and convalescents. Its members met for Communion,
prayer, and other spiritual exercises in the church of S.
Salvatore, and the saint himself introduced exposition of the
Blessed Sacrament once a month (see FORTY HOURS' DEVOTION). At
these devotions Philip preached, though still a layman, and we
learn that on one occasion alone he converted no less than
thirty dissolute youths. In 1550 a doubt occurred to him as to
whether he should not discontinue his active work and retire
into absolute solitude. His perplexity was set at rest by a
vision of St. John the Baptist, and by another vision of two
souls in glory, one of whom was eating a roll of bread,
signifying God's will that he should live in Rome for the good
of souls as though he were in a desert, abstaining as far as
possible from the use of meat.
In 1551, however, he received a true vocation from God. At the
bidding of his confessor -- nothing short of this would overcome
his humility -- he entered the priesthood, and went to live at
S. Girolamo, where a staff of chaplains was supported by the
Confraternity of Charity. Each priest had two rooms assigned to
him, in which he lived, slept, and ate, under no rule save that
of living in charity with his brethren. Among Philip's new
companions, besides Persiano Rosa, was Buonsignore Cacciaguerra
(see "A Precursor of St. Philip" by Lady Amabel Kerr, London), a
remarkable penitent, who was at that time carrying on a vigorous
propaganda in favour of frequent Communion. Philip, who as a
layman had been quietly encouraging the frequent reception of
the sacraments, expended the whole of his priestly energy in
promoting the same cause; but unlike his precursor, he
recommended the young especially to confess more often than they
communicated. The church of S. Girolamo was much frequented even
before the coming of Philip, and his confessional there soon
became the centre of a mighty apostolate. He stayed in church,
hearing confessions or ready to hear them, from daybreak till
nearly midday, and not content with this, he usually confessed
some forty persons in his room before dawn. Thus he laboured
untiringly throughout his long priesthood. As a physician of
souls he received marvellous gifts from God. He would sometimes
tell a penitent his most secret sins without his confessing
them; and once he converted a young nobleman by showing him a
vision of hell. Shortly before noon he would leave his
confessional to say Mass. His devotion to the Blessed Sacrament,
like the miracle of his heart, is one of those manifestations of
sanctity which are peculiarly his own. So great was the fervour
of his charity, that, instead of recollecting himself before
Mass, he had to use deliberate means of distraction in order to
attend to the external rite. During the last five years of his
life he had permission to celebrate privately in a little chapel
close to his room. At the "Agnus Dei" the server went out,
locked the doors, and hung up a notice: "Silence, the Father is
saying Mass". When he returned in two hours or more, the saint
was so absorbed in God that he seemed to be at the point of
death.
Philip devoted his afternoons to men and boys, inviting them to
informal meetings in his room, taking them to visit churches,
interesting himself in their amusements, hallowing with his
sweet influence every department of their lives. At one time he
had a longing desire to follow the example of St. Francis
Xavier, and go to India. With this end in view, he hastened the
ordination of some of his companions. But in 1557 he sought the
counsel of a Cistercian at Tre Fontane; and as on a former
occasion he had been told to make Rome his desert, so now the
monk communicated to him a revelation he had had from St. John
the Evangelist, that Rome was to be his India. Philip at once
abandoned the idea of going abroad, and in the following year
the informal meetings in his room developed into regular
spiritual exercises in an oratory, which he built over the
church. At these exercises laymen preached and the excellence of
the discourses, the high quality of the music, and the charm of
Philip's personality attracted not only the humble and lowly,
but men of the highest rank and distinction in Church and State.
Of these, in 1590, Cardinal Nicolo Sfondrato, became Pope
Gregory XIV, and the extreme reluctance of the saint alone
prevented the pontiff from forcing him to accept the
cardinalate. In 1559, Philip began to organize regular visits to
the Seven Churches, in company with crowds of men, priests and
religious, and laymen of every rank and condition. These visits
were the occasion of a short but sharp persecution on the part
of a certain malicious faction, who denounced him as "a
setter-up of new sects". The cardinal vicar himself summoned
him, and without listening to his defence, rebuked him in the
harshest terms. For a fortnight the saint was suspended from
hearing confessions; but at the end of that time he made his
defence, and cleared himself before the ecclesiastical
authorities. In 1562, the Florentines in Rome begged him to
accept the office of rector of their church, S. Giovanni dei
Fiorentini, but he was reluctant to leave S. Girolamo. At length
the matter was brought before Pius IV, and a compromise was
arrived at (1564). While remaining himself at S. Girolamo,
Philip became rector of S. Giovanni, and sent five priests, one
of whom was Baronius, to represent him there. They lived in
community under Philip as their superior, taking their meals
together, and regularly attending the exercises at S. Girolamo.
In 1574, however, the exercises began to be held in an oratory
at S. Giovanni. Meanwhile the community was increasing in size,
and in 1575 it was formally recognised by Gregory XIII as the
Congregation of the Oratory, and given the church of S. Maria in
Vallicella. The fathers came to live there in 1577, in which
year they opened the Chiesa Nuova, built on the site of the old
S. Maria, and transferred the exercises to a new oratory. Philip
himself remained at S. Girolamo till 1583, and it was only in
obedience to Gregory XIII that he then left his old home and
came to live at the Vallicella.
The last years of his life were marked by alternate sickness and
recovery. In 1593, he showed the true greatness of one who knows
the limits of his own endurance, and resigned the office of
superior which had been conferred on him for life. In 1594, when
he was in an agony of pain, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him,
and cured him. At the end of March, 1595, he had a severe attack
of fever, which lasted throughout April; but in answer to his
special prayer God gave him strength to say Mass on 1 May in
honour of SS. Philip and James. On the following 12 May he was
seized with a violent haemorrhage, and Cardinal Baronius, who
had succeeded him as superior, gave him Extreme Unction. After
that he seemed to revive a little and his friend Cardinal
Frederick Borromeo brought him the Viaticum, which he received
with loud protestations of his own unworthiness. On the next day
he was perfectly well, and till the actual day of his death went
about his usual duties, even reciting the Divine Office, from
which he was dispensed. But on 15 May he predicted that he had
only ten more days to live. On 25 May, the feast of Corpus
Christi, he went to say Mass in his little chapel, two hours
earlier than usual. "At the beginning of his Mass", writes
Bacci, "he remained for some time looking fixedly at the hill of
S. Onofrio, which was visible from the chapel, just as if he saw
some great vision. On coming to the Gloria in Excelsis he began
to sing, which was an unusual thing for him, and sang the whole
of it with the greatest joy and devotion, and all the rest of
the Mass he said with extraordinary exultation, and as if
singing." He was in perfect health for the rest of that day, and
made his usual night prayer; but when in bed, he predicted the
hour of the night at which he would die. About an hour after
midnight Father Antonio Gallonio, who slept under him, heard him
walking up and down, and went to his room. He found him lying on
the bed, suffering from another haemorrhage. "Antonio, I am
going", he said; Gallonio thereupon fetched the medical men and
the fathers of the congregation. Cardinal Baronius made the
commendation of his soul, and asked him to give the fathers his
final blessing. The saint raised his hand slightly, and looked
up to heaven. Then inclining his head towards the fathers, he
breathed his last. Philip was beatified by Paul V in 1615, and
canonized by Gregory XV in 1622.
It is perhaps by the method of contrast that the distinctive
characteristics of St. Philip and his work are brought home to
us most forcibly (see Newman, "Sermons on Various Occasions", n.
xii; "Historical Sketches", III, end of ch. vii). We hail him as
the patient reformer, who leaves outward things alone and works
from within, depending rather on the hidden might of sacrament
and prayer than on drastic policies of external improvement; the
director of souls who attaches more value to mortification of
the reason than to bodily austerities, protests that men may
become saints in the world no less than in the cloister, dwells
on the importance of serving God in a cheerful spirit, and gives
a quaintly humorous turn to the maxims of ascetical theology;
the silent watcher of the times, who takes no active part in
ecclesiastical controversies and is yet a motive force in their
development, now encouraging the use of ecclesiastical history
as a bulwark against Protestantism, now insisting on the
absolution of a monarch, whom other counsellors would fain
exclude from the sacraments (see BARONIUS), now praying that God
may avert a threatened condemnation (see SAVONAROLA) and
receiving a miraculous assurance that his prayer is heard (see
Letter of Ercolani referred to by Capecelatro); the founder of a
Congregation, which relies more on personal influence than on
disciplinary organization, and prefers the spontaneous practice
of counsels of perfection to their enforcement by means of vows;
above all, the saint of God, who is so irresistibly attractive,
so eminently lovable in himself, as to win the title of the
"Amabile santo".
GALLONIO, companion of the saint was the first to produce a Life
of St. Philip, published in Latin (1600) and in Italian (1601),
written with great precision, and following a strictly
chronological order. Several medical treatises were written on
the saint's palpitation and fractured ribs, e. g. ANGELO DA
BAGNAREA's Medica disputatio de palpitatione cordis, fractura
costarum, aliisque affectionibus B. Philippi Nerii. . .qua
ostenditur praedictas affectiones fuisse supra naturam,
dedicated to Card. Frederick Borromeo (Rome, 1613). BACCI wrote
an Italian Life and dedicated it to Gregory XV (1622). His work
is the outcome of a minute examination of the processes of
canonization, and contains important matter not found in
GALLONIO. BROCCHI's Life of St. Philip, contained in his Vite
de' santi e beati Fiorentini (Florence, 1742), includes the
saint's pedigree, and gives the Florentine tradition of his
early years; for certain chronological discrepancies between
GALLONIO, BACCI, and BROCCHI, see notes on the chronology in
ANTROBUS' ed. of BACCI. Other Lives are by RICCI (Rome, 1670),
whose work was an enlargement of BACCI, and includes his own
Lives of the Companions of St. Philip; MARCIANO (1693); SONZONIO
(1727); BERNABEI (d. 1662), whose work is published for the
first time by the BOLLANDISTS (Acta SS., May, VII); RAMIREZ, who
adapts the language of Scripture to St. Philip in a Latin work
called the Via lactea, dedicated to Innocent XI (Valencia,
1682); and BAYLE (1859). GEOTHE at the end of his Italien. Reise
(Italian Journey) gives a sketch of the saint, entitled Filippo
Neri, der humoristische Heilige. The most important modern Life
is that of CAPECELATRO (1879), treating fully of the saint's
relations with the persons and events of his time. There is an
English Life by HOPE (London, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago). An
abridged English translation of BACCI appeared in penal times
(Paris, 1656), a fact which shows our Catholic forefathers'
continued remembrance of the saint, who used to greet the
English College students with the words, "Salvete, flores
martyrum." FABER's Modern Saints (1847) includes translations of
an enlarged ed. of BACCI, and of RICCI's Lives of the
Companions. Of the former there is a new and revised edition by
ANTROBUS (London, 1902). CAPECELATRO's work has been translated
by POPE (London, 1882). English renderings of two of St.
Philip's sonnets by RYDER are published at the end of the recent
editions of BACCI and CAPECELATRO, together with translations of
St. Philip's letters. These were originally published in
BISCONI's Raccolta di lettere di santi e beati Fiorentini
(Florence, 1737); but since that time twelve other letters have
come to light.
C. SEBASTIAN RITCHIE
Peter Philips
Peter Philips
(Also known as PETRUS PHILIPPUS, PIETRO PHILLIPO.)
Born in England about 1560; date and place of death unknown. It
is generally accepted that Philips, remaining faithful to the
Church, left England for the Netherlands, whence he went to
Rome, and afterwards, returning to Antwerp, became organist at
the court of the governor, Duke Albert. Having entered Holy
orders, he held a canonry at Bethune, in Flanders, which he
exchanged for a similar honour at Soignes in 1612. It has been
pointed out that the title-pages of his published works are the
best index to his movements and abiding places, and they are
various. Philips ranks in importance as a musician with Tallys,
Byrd, Morley, and Orlando Gibbons, and is considered one of the
great masters of his time. Besides canzoni and madrigals for six
and eight voices, he left innumerable instrumental works which
have been preserved in the libraries of Antwerp, Leyden,
Strasburg, and London. Nineteen of these are contained in "The
Fitz-William Virginal Book" by J. A. Fuller- Maitland and W. B.
Squire. To the Church, however, Philips devoted his best
efforts. Besides single numbers found in various collections of
his period, a volume of five-part motets; another of similar
works for eight voices; "Gemmulae sacrae" for two and three
voices and figured bass; "Les rossignols spirituels", a
collection of two- and four-part pieces, some to Latin words,
but most of them to French; "Deliciae sacrae", forty-one
compositions for two and three parts, are preserved in the
British Museum. The library of John IV of Portugal contains
Philips's posthumous works -- masses for six, eight, and nine
voices, and motets for eight voices. His "Cantiones sacrae" have
recently been made available for modern use, and have been added
to the repertoire of the choir of Westminster Cathedral.
BERGMANS, L'Organiste des archiducs Albert et Isabelle (Ghent,
1903); SQUIRE in GROVE, Dictionary of Music, s.v.
JOSEPH OTTEN
Philip the Arabian
Philip the Arabian
(Philippus)
Emperor of Rome (244-249), the son of an Arab sheik, born in
Bosra. He rose to be an influential officer of the Roman army.
In 243 the Emperor Gordianus III was at war with Persia; the
administration of the army and the empire were directed with
great success by his father-in-law Timesitheus. Timesitheus,
however, died in 243 and the helpless Gordianus, a minor,
appointed Marcus Julius Philippus as his successor. By causing a
scarcity of provisions Philip increased the exasperation of the
soldiers against the emperor and they proclaimed Philip emperor.
Philip now had Gordianus secretly executed. However, as he
erected a monument to Gordianus on the Euphrates and deified
him, he deceived the Senate and obtained recognition as emperor.
He abandoned the advantages Timesitheus had won from the Persian
King Sapor. He withdrew from Asia, and recalled a large number
of divisions of the army from Dacia, Rhaetia, and Britain to
northern Italy to protect it against incursions from the East.
On account of invasions by the Capri he hastened to the lower
Danube, where he was successful in two battles. Consequently on
coins he bears the surname of Carpicus Maximus. Philip gave high
offices of State to his relations who misused these positions.
He also made his son Philip, when seven years of age, co-ruler.
The most important event of his reign was the celebration of the
thousandth year of the existence of Rome in April, 248.
The insecurity of his authority in the outlying districts showed
itself in the appearance of rival emperors proclaimed by the
legions stationed there. The Goths sought to settle permanently
in Roman territory; and as the army of the Danube could not
defend itself without a centralized control, the soldiers, at
the close of 248, forced Decius, sent to suppress the mutinies,
to accept the position of emperor. Decius advanced into Italy,
where he defeated Philip near Verona. Philip and his son were
killed. During Philip's reign Christians were not disturbed. The
emperor also issued police regulations for the maintenance of
public morality. A statement of St. Jerome's caused Philip to be
regarded in the Middle Ages as the first Christian Emperor of
Rome.
MOMMSEN, Rom. Gesch. V (Berlin, 1885); for further bibliography,
see PERTINAX.
KARL HOEBER
Philistines
Philistines
(Septuagint phylistieim in the Pentateuch and Josue, elsewhere
allophyloi, "foreigners").
In the Biblical account the Philistines come into prominence as
the inhabitants of the maritime plain of Palestine from the time
of the Judges onward. They are mentioned in the genealogy of the
nations (Genesis 10:14; cf. I Par. 1:11-12), where together with
the Caphtorim they are set down as descendants of Mesraim. It is
conjectured with probability that they came originally from
Crete, sometimes identified with Caphtor, and that they belonged
to a piratical, seafaring people.
They make their first appearance in Biblical history late in the
period of the Judges in connection with the prophesied birth of
the hero Samson. The angel appearing to Saraa, wife of Manue of
the race of Dan, tells her that, though barren, she shall bear a
son who "shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the
Philistines" (Judges 13:1-5); and we are informed in the same
passage that the domination of the Philistines over Israel had
lasted forty years. In the subsequent chapters graphic accounts
are given of the encounters between Samson and these enemies of
his nation who were encroaching upon Israel's western border.
In the early days of Samuel we find the Philistines trying to
make themselves masters of the interior of Palestine, and in one
of the ensuing battles they succeeded in capturing the Ark of
the Covenant (I Kings 4). The coming of a pestilence upon them,
however, induced them to return it, and it remained for many
years in the house of Abinadab in Cariathiarim (I Kings 5; 6;
7).
After Saul became king the Philistines tried to break his power,
but were unsuccessful, chiefly owing to the bravery of Jonathan
(I Kings 13; 14). Their progress was not, however, permanently
checked, for we are told (I Kings 14:52) that there was a "great
war against the Philistines all the days of Saul", and at the
end of the latter's reign we find their army still in possession
of the rich plain of Jezrael including the city of Bethsan on
its eastern border (I Kings 31:10).
They met with a severe defeat, however, early in the reign of
David (II Kings 5:20-25), who succeeded in reducing them to a
state of vassalage (II Kings 8:1). Prior to this date the power
of the Philistines seems to have been concentrated in the hands
of the rulers of the cities of Gaza, Ascalon, Azotus (Ashdod),
Accaron, and Geth, and a peculiar title signifying "Lord of the
Philistines" was borne by each of these petty kings. The
Philistines regained their independence at the end of the reign
of David, probably about the time of the schism, for we find the
Kings of Israel in the ninth century endeavouring to wrest from
them Gebbethon, a city on the border of the maritime plain (III
Kings 15:27; 16:15). Towards the close of the same century the
Assyrian ruler, King Adad-Nirari, placed them under tribute and
began the long series of Assyrian interference in Philistine
affairs. In Amos (1:6, 8) we find a denunciation of the
Philistine monarchies as among the independent kingdoms of the
time.
During the latter part of the eighth century and during the
whole of the seventh the history of the Philistines is made up
of a continual series of conspiracies, conquests, and
rebellions. Their principal foes were the Assyrians on the one
side and the Egyptians on the other. In the year of the fall of
Samaria (721 B.C.) they became vassals of Sargon. They rebelled,
however, ten years later under the leadership of Ashdod, but
without permanent success. Another attempt was made to shake off
the Assyrian yoke at the end of the reign of Sennacherib. In
this conflict the Philistine King of Accaron, who remained
faithful to Sennacherib, was cast into prison by King Ezechias
of Juda. The allies who were thus brought together were defeated
at Eltekeh and the result was the siege of Jerusalem by
Sennacherib (IV Kings 18; 19). Esarhaddon and Asurbanipal in
their western campaigns crossed the territory of the Philistines
and held it in subjection, and after the decline of Assyria the
encroachments of the Assyrians gave place to those of the
Egyptians under the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
It is probable that the Philistines suffered defeat at the hands
of Nabuchodonosor, though no record of his conquest of them has
been preserved. The old title "Lords of the Philistines" has now
disappeared, and the title "King" is bestowed by the Assyrians
on the Philistine rulers. The siege of Gaza, which held out
against Alexander the Great, is famous, and we find the
Ptolemies and Seleucids frequently fighting over Philistine
territory. The land finally passed under Roman rule, and its
cities had subsequently an important history. After the time of
the Assyrians the Philistines cease to be mentioned by this
name. Thus Herodotus speaks of the "Arabians" as being in
possession of the lower Mediterranean coast in the time of
Cambyses. From this it is inferred by some that at that time the
Philistines had been supplanted. In the ebb and flow of warring
nations over this land it is more than probable that they were
gradually absorbed and lost their identity.
It is generally supposed that the Philistines adopted in the
main the religion and civilization of the Chanaanites. In I
Kings 5:2, we read: "And the Philistines took the ark of God,
and brought it into the temple of Dragon, and set it by Dragon",
from which we infer that their chief god was this Semitic deity.
The latter appears in the Tel el-Amarna Letters and also in the
Babylonian inscriptions. At Ascalon likewise there was a temple
dedicated to the Semitic goddess Ishtar, and as the religion of
the Philistines was thus evidently Semitic, so also were
probably the other features of their civilization.
Besides the standard Commentaries see MASPERO, Histoire ancienne
des peuples de l'Orient (6th ed., Paris, 1904), tr., The Dawn of
Civilization (4th ed., London, 1901); BRUGSCH, Egypt under the
Pharaohs (tr., London, 1880), ix-xiv.
JAMES F. DRISCOLL
Robert Phillip
Robert Phillip
Priest, d. at Paris, 4 Jan., 1647. He was descended from the
Scottish family of Phillip of Sanquhar, but nothing is known of
his early life. Ordained in Rome, he returned in 1612 to
Scotland where he was betrayed by his father, seized while
saying Mass, and tried at Edinburgh as a seminary priest, 14
Sept., 1613. The sentence of death was commuted to banishment,
and he withdrew to France, where he joined the French Oratory
recently founded by Cardinal de Berulle. In 1628 he went to
England as confessor to Queen Henrietta Maria, and at her
request he besought the pope for financial aid against the
king's enemies. The subsequent negotiations were discovered, and
Phillip was impeached on the charge of being a papal spy and of
having endeavoured to pervert Prince Charles, but proceedings
dropped owing to the displeasure of Richelieu at the
introduction of his own name into the matter. Later he was
committed to the Tower for refusing to be sworn on the Anglican
Bible on 2 Nov., 1641, when he had been summoned by the Lords'
committee to be examined touching State matters. Released
through the queen's influence, he accompanied her to The Hague
in March, 1642, and remained with her in Paris till his death.
NALSON, Collection of Affairs of State, II (London, 1682-3);
BERINGTON, Memoirs of Panzani (Birmingham, 1793); STOTHERT;
Catholic Church in Scotland, ed. GORDON (Glasgow, 1869); FOLEY,
Records of Eng. Jesuits, V (London, 1879); SECCOMBE in Dict.
Nat. Biog., s.v. PHILIPS, ROBERT; GILLOW, Bible. Dict. Eng.
Cath., s.v.
EDWIN BURTON
Phillips, George
George Phillips
A canonist, born at Koenigsberg, 6 Sept., 1804; died at Vienna,
6 September, 1872, was the son of James Phillips, an Englishman
who had acquired wealth as a merchant in Koenigsberg, and of a
Scotchwoman nee Hay. On completing his course at the gymnasium,
George studied law at the Universities of Berlin and Goettingen
(1822-24); his principal teachers were von Savigny and Eichhorn,
and, under the influence of the latter, he devoted himself
mainly to the study of Germanic law. After obtaining the degree
of Doctor of Law at Goettingen in 1824, he paid a long visit to
England. In 1826 he qualified at Berlin as Privatdozent (tutor)
for German law, and in 1827 was appointed professor
extraordinary in this faculty. In the same year he married
Charlotte Housselle, who belonged to a French Protestant family
settled in Berlin. Phillips formed a close friendship with his
colleague K. E. Jarcke, professor at Berlin since 1825, who had
entered the Catholic Church in 1824. Jarcke's influence and his
own searching studies into medieval Germany led to the
conversion of Phillips and his wife in 1828 (14 May). Jarcke
having removed to Vienna in 1832, Phillips accepted in 1833 a
call to Munich as counsel in the Bavarian Ministry of the
Interior. In 1834 he was named professor of history, and a few
months later professor of law at the University of Munich. He
now joined that circle of illustrious men including the two
Goerres, Moehler, Doellinger, and Ringseis, who, filled with
enthusiasm for the Church, laboured for the renewal of the
religious life, the defence of Catholic rights and religious
freedom, and the revival of Catholic scholarship. In 1838 he
founded with Guido Goerres the still flourishing militant
"Historischpolitische Blaetter". His lectures, notable for their
excellence and form, treated with unusual fullness subjects
connected with ecclesiastical interests. In consequence of the
Lola Montez affair, in connexion with which Phillips signed,
with six other Munich professors, an address of sympathy with
the dismissed minister Abel, he was relieved of his chair in
1847. In 1848 he was elected deputy of a Muenster district for
the National Assembly of Frankfort, at which he energetically
upheld the Catholic interests. In 1850, after declining a call
as professor to Wuerzburg, he accepted the chair of German law
at Innsbruck, and there resumed his academic activity. Invited
to fill the same chair in Vienna in 1851, he removed to the
Austrian capital, and remained there until his death. Once
(1862-7) he accepted a long leave of absence to complete his
"Kirchenrecht". He always maintained his relations with his
friends in Munich and other cities of Germany, and never relaxed
his activity in furthering Catholic interests. As a writer, his
labours lay in the domain of German law, canon law, and their
respective histories. At first his activity was directed mainly
to the first-mentioned, his principal contributions on the
subject being: "Versuch einer Darstellung des angelsaechsischen
Rechtes" (Goettingen, 1825); "Englische Reichs- und
Rechtsgeschichte", of which two volumes (dealing with the period
1066-1189) appeared (Berlin, 1827-8); "Deutsche Geschichte mit
besonderer Ruecksicht auf Religion, Recht und Verfassung", of
which two volumes alone were issued (Berlin, 1832-4), deals with
Merovingian and Carlovingian times; "Grundsaetze des gemeinen
deutschen Privatrechts mit Einschluss des Lehnrechts" (Berlin,
1838); "Deutsche Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte" (Munich, 1845).
After his call to Munich, however, Phillips recognized his chief
task in the treatment of canon law from the strictly Catholic
standpoint. In addition to numerous smaller treatises, he
published in this domain: "Die Dioezesansynode" (Freiburg,
1849), and especially his great "Kirchenrecht", which appeared
in seven volumes (Ratisbon, 1845-72), and was continued by
Vering (vol. VIII, i, Ratisbon, 1889). This comprehensive and
important work exercised a great influence on the study of canon
law and its principles. Phillips also published a "Lehrbuch des
Kirchenrechts" (Ratisbon, 1859-62; 3rd ed. by Moufang, 1881) and
"Vermischte Schriften" (3 vols., Ratisbon, 1856-60).
ROSENTHAL, Konvertitenbilder, I (2nd ad.), 478 sqq., SCHULTE in
Allg. deutsche Biogr., XXVI (Leipzig, 1888), 80 sqq.; WURZBACH,
Biogr. Lex. d. Kaisertums Oesterreich, XXII, 211 sqq.
J. P. KIRSCH.
Philo Judaeus
Philo Judaeus
Born about 25 b.c.. His family, of a sacerdotal line, was one of
the most powerful of the populous Jewish colony of Alexandria.
His brother Alexander Lysimachus was steward to Anthony's second
daughter, and married one of his sons to the daughter of Herod
Agrippa, whom he had put under financial obligations.
Alexander's son, Tiberius Alexander, apostatized and became
procurator of Judea and Prefect of Egypt. Philo must have
received a Jewish education, studying the laws and national
traditions, but he followed also the Greek plan of studies
(grammar with reading of the poets, geometry, rhetoric,
dialectics) which he reagarded as a preparation for philosophy.
Notwithstanding the lack of direct information about his
philosophical training, his works show that he had a first hand
knowledge of the stoical theories then prevailing, Plato's
dialogues, the neo-Pythagorean works, and the moral popular
literature, the outcome of Cynicism. He remained, however,
profoundly attached to the Jewish religion with all the
practices which it implied among the Jews of the dispersion and
of which the basis was the unity of worship at the Temple in
Jerusalem. Toward the Alexandrine community and the duties which
it required of him, his attitude was perhaps changeable; he
possessed in his youth a taste for an exclusively contemplative
life and solitary retreats; and he complains of an official
function which forced him to abandon his studies. Later he
became engrossed with the material and moral interests of the
community. His "Allegorical Commentary" often alludes to the
vocations to which the Alexandrine Jews were subjected; a
special treatise is devoted to the persecution of Flaccus,
Prefect of Egypt. The best-known episode of his life is the
voyage he made to Rome in 39; he had been chosen as head of the
embassy which was to lay before Emperor Caius Caligula the
complaints of the Jews regarding the introduction of statues of
the emperor in the synagogues. This hardship, due to the
Alexandrians, was all the more grievous to the Jews, as they had
long been known for their loyalty, and their attachment to the
empire was doubtless one of the chief causes of anti-Semitism at
Alexandria. The drawing up of the account of the embassy shortly
after the death of Caius (41) is the latest known fact in the
life of Philo.
Writings
These contain most valuable information, not only on the
intellectual and moral situation of the Jewish community at
Alexandria, but still more on the philosophical and religious
syncretism prevailing in Greek civilization. They may be
divided: (1) expositon of the Jewish Law; (2) apologetical
works; (3) philosophical treatises.
(1) The expositons of the Law are in three works of varied
character: (a) "The Exposition of the Law", which begins by a
treatise on the creation of the world (Commentaries on the first
chapter of Genesis) and continues with treatises on Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (those on Isaac and Jacob are lost).
Each of the patriarchs is considered as a type of a virtue and
the life as a natural or unwritten law. Then follows a series of
treatises on the laws written by Moses, grouped in order
according to the Ten Commandments. The Exposition closes with
the laws referring to general virtues (On Justice and Courage),
and a treatise on the reward reserved to those who obey the Law.
(See "De Praemiis et Poe;nis", S:S: 1, 2.) (b) The great
"Allegorical Commentary on Genesis" is the chief source of
information regarding Philo's ideas; in it he applies
systematically the method of allegorical interpretation. The
commentary follows the order of verses from Gen., ii, 1, to iv,
17, with some more or less important lacunae. It is not known
whether the work began by a treatise on chapter 1, concerning
creation; in any case, it can be seen from the allusions to this
chapter that Philo had a system of interpretation on this point.
Notwithstanding its form, this work is not a series of
interpretations strung together verse by verse; the author
considers Genesis in its entirety as a history of the soul from
its formation in the intelligible world to the complete
development of wisdom after its fall and its restoration by
repentance (see ed. Mangey, "De Posteritate Caini", p. 259). The
object of the allegorical method is to discern in each person
and in his actions the symbol of some phase either in the fall
or in the restoration of the soul. (c) "Questions and Solutions"
are a series of questions set down at each verse of the Mosaic
books. An Armenian translation has preserved the questions on
Genesis (Gen., ii, 4- xxiii, 8, with lacunae) and the questions
on Exodus (Ex., xii, 2-xxviii, 38), some Greek fragments of
these works and of the questions on Leviticus, a very mediocre
Latin translation of the last part of the questions on Genesis
(iv, 154 sq.). In Samson and Jonas, there is much less unity
than in the preceding ones. This first group of works is
addressed to readers already initiated in the Mosaic Law, i.e.
to the author's coreligionists.
(2) It is quite different with his apologetical writings. The
"Life of Moses" is a resume of the Jewish Law, intended for a
larger public. The treatise "On Repentance" was written for the
edification of the newly converted. The treatise "On Humanity"
which followed that "On Piety" seems from its introduction to
pertain to the "Life of Moses" and not to the "Exposition of the
Law" as tradition and some contemporaneous scholars maintain.
The Upothetina (fragments in Eusebius, "Evangelical
Preparation", VIII, v, vi) as well as the "Apology for the Jews"
(ibid., VIII, x) were written to defend his coreligionists
against calumnies, while the "Contemplative Life" was to
cultivate the best fruits of the Mosaic worship. The "Against
Flaccus" and the "Embassy to Caius", with another work lost in
the persecution of Sejanus, were intended to establish the truth
about the pretended impiety of the Jews.
(3) Finally, we have purely philosophical treatises: "On the
Liberty of the Wise", "On the Incorruptibility of the World"
(authenticity contested by Bernays, but generally admitted now),
"On Providence", "On Animals" (these last two in the Armenian
translations). The small treatise "De Mundo" is merely a
compilation of passages from other works. The question of
chronology is more difficult than that of classification. The
solution of the difficulty would be of great value especially
for the subdivisions of the first group of writings, in order to
understand the development of Philo's doctrines; but on this
point there is a wide divergence of opinion. It is probable,
however, that the "Exposition of the Law" with the frequent
appeals to the authority of the masters and its cautious way of
introducing the allegorical interpretation is anterior to the
"Allegorical Commentary" which shows more assurance and
independence of thought.
Doctrine
Philo's work belongs for the most part to the immense literature
of commentaries on the Law, and it is especially as a
commentator that he must be considered. But in this regard he
holds a unique place. First of all, he uses the Greek
translation of the Septuagint. The variations that have been
pointed out between his text and that which we now possess of
the Septuagint may be explained to our satisfaction, not by the
reading of the Hebrew text (Ritter), but by the fact that our
recension is of a later date than the one he used. Furthermore,
his method of interpretation appears as something new and
original among the juridical commentaries of the Palestinian
rabbis. Eliminating what formed the common basis of all
commentaries of this kind-the interpretation of the Hebrew
proper names (Philo gives them at times a Greek etymology), the
particular rules for the signs which indicate that Moses
intended us to look beyond the literal sense (Siegfried), the
oral traditions added to the account of the Pentateuch (and
again, at the beginning of the "Life of Moses" these traditions
are clearly of Alexandrine origin), and the prescriptions of the
worship in Jerusalem-two essential features remain: first, the
conviction that the Jewish law is identical with the natural;
and then the allegorical interpretation. The first, according to
which the acts of the prophets and the prescriptions of Moses
are regarded as ideals conformable to nature (in the Stoic
sense), gives to the Jewish religion a universality incompatible
with the narrow national Messianism of the Jewish sibyls. Philo
thus abandons entirely the Messianic promises; there is no
national tradition to exclude the Gentile from Judaism. To find
his precursors one must go back to the Prophets; tradition he
revives, but only with serious modifications. To the idea of
moral universality he adds the idea of nature which he received
from the Stoics. His interpretation is wholly bent on
identifying the Mosaic prescription with natural law.
The second feature is the allegorical interpretation. Without
doubt Philo had his predecessors among the Alexandrines. The
proof of this is found not in the fragments of Aristobulus
(which are grossly false and later than Philo), but in the work
of Philo himself, which is based sometimes on the authority of
his predecessors, in the "Wisdom of Solomon" (an Alexandrine
work of the first century b.c., which contains some traces of
this method), and finally in the description Philo has given us
of the occupations of the Therapeutae and the Essenes. The
tradition, however, thus formed cannot have amounted to much,
for it does not prevail against personal inspiration and it
lacks unity. This interpretation appears to us rather as a
day-by-day creation of that age, and in Philo's works we can
follow an allegory in process of formation, e.g. the
interpretation of man "after the image of God". The development
of the interior moral life as Philo conceived it is always bound
up with his allegorical method. This method differs from that of
most of his Greek predecessors who sought an artificial means to
bring out the philosophical conceptions in time-honoured texts,
such as that of Homer. As a rule he does not search in the
sacred text for any strictly philosophical theory; more often he
puts forth these theories directly on their own merits. Though
at times enthusiastic in his admiration of Greek philosophers,
he does not try to represent them as unavowed disciples of
Moses. What he seeks in Genesis is not this or that truth, but
the description of the attitudes of the soul towards God, such
as innocence, sin, repentance. The allegorical method of Philo
neither proves nor attempts to prove anything. It is not a mode
of apologetic; in the "Life of Moses" e.g. this method is seldom
employed; the only apologetic feature is the presentation of the
high moral import of the Jewish laws taken in their literal
sense. But the method is indispensable for the interior life; it
gives the concrete image which the mystic needs to explain his
effusions, and it makes the Jewish books profitable in the
spiritual life. The spiritual life consists in the feeling of
confidence which gives us faith in God, a feeling which
coincides with that of the nothingness of man left to his own
strength. Faith in God is not in itself the condition but the
end or crowning of this life, and human life oscillates between
confidence in self and confidence in God. This God conceived in
His relations with the moral needs of man has the omnipotence
and infinite goodness of the God of the prophets; it is by no
means the God of the Stoics, in direct relation with the cosmos
rather than with man.
Under this influence the Philonian cult became an eminently
moral one: the originality of Philonism consists in its moral
interpretation of the actions of the divinity upon the world,
which till then had been regarded more in their physical aspect.
The fundamental idea is here that of Divine power conceived
according to the manner of the Jews as goodness and sovereignty
in relation to man. It is remarkable that with this idea the
cosmic power of philosophy or of Greek religion is transformed
by Philo into moral power. Divine wisdom is without doubt like
the Isis in Plutarch's treatise, mother of the world, but above
all mother of goodness in the virtuous soul. The "Man of God" is
the moral consciousness of man rather than the prototype or
ideal. The Divine spirit is transformed from the material ether
into the principle of moral inspiration. We recognize, it is
true, the traces of the cosmic origin of the Divine
intermediaries; the angels are material intermediaries as well
as spiritual, and Philo accepts the belief in the power of the
heavenly bodies as an inferior degree of wisdom. Nevertheless he
did his best to suppress every material intermediary between man
and God. This is quite evident in the celebrated theory of the
Logos of God. This Logos, which according to the Stoics is the
bond between the different parts of the world, and according to
the Heracliteans the source of the cosmic oppositions, is
regarded by Philo as the Divine word which reveals God to the
soul and calms the passions (see Logos). It is finally from this
point of view of the interior life that Philo transforms the
moral conception of the Greeks which he knew mainly in the most
popular forms (cynical diatribes); he discovers in them the idea
of the moral conscience accepted though but slightly developed
by philosophers up to that time. A very interesting point of
view is the consideration of the various moral systems of the
Greeks, not simply as true or false, but as so many indications
of the soul's progress or recoil at different stages.
Consult various editions of Philo's works: Mangey (2 vols.,
London, 1742); Cohn and Wendland, I-V (Berlin, 1896-1906);
Cumont, De AEternitate Mundi (Berlin, 1891); Conybeare, Philo
about Contemplative Life (Oxford, 1895); Harris, Fragments of
Philo Judaeus (Cambridge, 1886); Wendland, Neuentdeckte
Fragmente Philos (Berlin, 1891). Writings: Grossmann, De
Philonis operum continua serie, I (Leipzig, 1841), II (1842);
Massebieau, Le Classement des OEuvres de Philon in Biblioth. de
l'Ecole des hautes etudes, I (1889), 191; Massebieau and
BrEhier, Chronologie de la Vie et des OEuvres de Philon in Revue
d'hist. des Relig. (1906), 1-3. Doctrine: Drummond, Philo
Judaeus (2 vols., London, 1888); Herriot, Philon le Juif; Essai
sur l'Ecole Juive d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1898); Martin, Philon
(Paris, 1907); BrEhier, Les Idees Philosophiques et Religieuses
de Philon d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1908); SchUerer, Gesch. des
Judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (3rd ed., Berlin,
1909); Siegfried, Philo v. Alexandria als Ausleger d. A. T.
(Jena, 1875).
Emile BrEhier
Philomelium
Philomelium
A titular see in Pisidia, suffragan of Antioch. According to
ancient writers Philomelium was situated in the south-west of
Phrygia near the frontier of Lycaonia, on the road from Synnada
to Iconium. It formed part of the "conventus" of Synnada. Its
coins show that it was allied with the neighbouring city of
Mandropolis (now Mandra). In the sixth century it formed part of
Pisidia, the inhabitants of which pronounced its name Philomede
or Philomene. In the Middle Ages it is often mentioned by
Byzantine historians in connexion with the wars with the
Seljukian sultans of Iconium. In the twelfth century it was one
of the chief cities of the sultanate; from this time it bore the
Turkish name of Ak-Sheher (white city), and to-day is the chief
town of the caza of the vilayet of Konieh, numbering 4000
inhabitants, nearly all Mussulmans, and is a station on the
railway from Eski-Shehr to Konieh. The ancient ruins are
unimportant; they include a few inscriptions, some of them
Christian. In a suburb is the tomb of Nasr Eddin Hodja, famous
for his sanctity among the Turks. Christianity was introduced
into Philomelium at an early date. In 196 the Church of Smyrna
wrote to the Church of Philomelium announcing the martyrdom of
St. Polycarp (Eusebius "Hist. Eccl.", IV, xix). Seven of its
bishops are known: Theosebius, present at the Council of
Constantinople (381); Paul, at Chalcedon (451); Marcianus, who
signed the letter to Emperor Leo from the bishops of Pisidia
(458); Aristodemus, present at the Council of Constantinople
(553); Marinus, at Constantinople (680 and 692); Sisinnius, at
Nicaea (787); Euthymius at the Photian Council of Constantinople
(879). In the Greek "Notitiae episcopatuum" Philomelium is first
mentioned among the suffragan sees of Antioch in Pisidia, and in
the ninth century among those of Amorium in Phrygia. It receives
mention until the thirteenth century.
Acta SS., Jan,. III, 317; LE QUIEN, Oriens christ., I, 1059;
HAMILTON, Researches, I, 472; II, 184; ARUNDELL, Discoveries, I,
282 sq.; TEXIER, Asie Mineure, 435; SMITH, Dict. of Greek and
Roman Geogr., s. v., contains bibliography ot ancient authors;
see also the notes of MUeLLER in Ptolemy, ed, DIDOT, I, 831.
S. PETRIDES
Saint Philomena
St. Philomena
On 25 May, 1802, during the quest for the graves of Roman
martyrs in the Catacomb of Priscilla, a tomb was discovered and
opened; as it contained a glass vessel it was assumed to be the
grave of a martyr. The view, then erroneously entertained in
Rome, that the presence of such vessels (supposed to have
contained the martyr's blood) in a grave was a symbol of
martyrdom, has been rejected in practice since the
investigations of De Rossi (cf. Leclercq in "Dict. d.archeol.
chret. et de liturg.", s.v. Ampoules de sang). The remains found
in the above-mentioned tomb were shown to be those of a young
maiden, and, as the name Filumena was discovered on the
earthenware slabs closing the grave, it was assumed that they
were those of a virgin martyr named Philumena. On 8 June, 1805,
the relics were translated to the church of Mungano, Diocese of
Nola (near Naples), and enshrined under one of its altars. In
1827 Leo XII presented the church with the three earthenware
tiles, with the inscription, which may be seen in the church
even today. On the basis of alleged revelations to a nun in
Naples, and of an entirely fanciful and indefensible explanation
of the allegorical paintings, which were found on the slabs
beside the inscription, a canon of the church in Mugnano, named
Di Lucia, composed a purely fictitious and romantic account of
the supposed martyrdom of St. Philomena, who is not mentioned in
any of the ancient sources. In consequence of the wonderful
favours received in answer to prayer before the relics of the
saint at Mugnano, devotion to them spread rapidly, and, after
instituting investigations into the question, Gregory XVI
appointed a special feast to be held on 9 September, "in honorem
s. Philumenae virginis et martyris" (cf. the lessons of this
feast in the Roman Breviary). The earthenware plates were fixed
in front of the grave as follows: LUMENA PAX TECUM FI. The
plates were evidently inserted in the wrong order, and the
inscription should doubtless read PAX TECUM FILUMENA. The
letters are painted on the plates with red paint, and the
inscription belongs to the primitive class of epigraphical
memorials in the Catacomb of Priscilla, thus, dating from about
the middle or second half of the second century. The
disarrangement of the inscription proves that it must have been
completed before the plates were put into position, although in
the numerous other examples of this kind in the same catacomb
the inscription was added only after the grave had been closed.
Consequently, since the disarrangement of the plates can
scarcely be explained as arising from an error, Marucchi seems
justified in concluding that the inscription and plates
originally belonged to an earlier grave, and were later employed
(now in the wrong order) to close another. Apart from the
letters, the plates contain three arrows, either as a decoration
or a punctuation, a leaf as decoration, two anchors, and a palm
as the well-known Christian symbols. Neither these signs nor the
glass vessel discovered in the grave can be regarded as a proof
of martyrdom.
J.P. KIRSCH
Philosophy
Philosophy
+ I. Definition of Philosophy.
+ II. Division of Philosophy.
+ III. The Principal Systematic Solutions.
+ IV. Philosophical Methods.
+ V. The Great Historical Currents of Thought.
+ VI. Contemporary Orientations.
+ VII. Is Progress in Philosophy Indefinite, or Is there a
Philosophia Perennis?
+ VIII. Philosophy and the Sciences.
+ IX. Philosophy and Religion.
+ X. The Catholic Church and Philosophy.
+ XI. The Teaching of Philosophy.
+ XII. Bibliography
I. DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY
Etymology
According to its etymology, the word "philosophy" (philosophia,
from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means "the love of
wisdom". This sense appears again in sapientia, the word used in
the Middle Ages to designate philosophy.
In the early stages of Greek, as of every other, civilization,
the boundary line between philosophy and other departments of
human knowledge was not sharply defined, and philosophy was
understood to mean "every striving towards knowledge". This
sense of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and Thucydides
(II, xl). In the ninth century of our era, Alcuin, employing it
in the same sense, says that philosophy is "naturarum
inquisitio, rerum humanarum divinarumque cognitio quantum homini
possibile est aestimare" -- investigation of nature, and such
knowledge of things human and Divine as is possible for man
(P.L., CI, 952).
In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the
aggregate of the human sciences, but "the general science of
things in the universe by their ultimate determinations and
reasons"; or again, "the intimate knowledge of the causes and
reasons of things", the profound knowledge of the universal
order.
Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of
philosophy, some of the most significant may be given. Plato
calls it "the acquisition of knowledge", ktesis epistemes
(Euthydemus, 288 d). Aristotle, mightier than his master at
compressing ideas, writes: ten onomazomenen sophian peri ta
procirc;ta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes -- "All
men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and
principles" (Metaph., I, i). These notions were perpetuated in
the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism,
neo-Platonism), with this difference, that the Stoics and
Epicureans accentuated the moral bearing of philosophy
("Philosophia studium summae virtutis", says Seneca in "Epist.",
lxxxix, 7), and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing (see
section V below). The Fathers of the Church and the first
philosophers of the Middle Ages seem not to have had a very
clear idea of philosophy for reasons which we will develop later
on (section IX), but its conception emerges once more in all its
purity among the Arabic philosophers at the end of the twelfth
century and the masters of Scholasticism in the thirteenth. St.
Thomas, adopting the Aristotelean idea, writes: "Sapientia est
scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas;
sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat" -- Wisdom
[i.e. philosophy] is the science which considers first and
universal causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all
causes" (In Metaph., I, lect. ii).
In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this
way of looking at it. Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom:
"Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus" -- "By the term
philosophy we denote the pursuit of wisdom" (Princ. philos.,
preface); and he understands by it "cognitio veritatis per
primas suas causas" -- " knowledge of truth by its first causes"
(ibid.). For Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things;
for Berkeley, "the study of wisdom and truth" (Princ.). The many
conceptions of philosophy given by Kant reduce it to that of a
science of the general principles of knowledge and of the
ultimate objects attainable by knowledge -- "Wissenschaft von
den letzten Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft". For the numerous
German philosophers who derive their inspiration from his
criticism -- Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher,
Schopenhauer, and the rest -- it is the general teaching of
science (Wissenschaftslehre). Many contemporary authors regard
it as the synthetic theory of the particular sciences:
"Philosophy", says Herbert Spencer, "is completely unified
knowledge" (First Principles, #37). Ostwald has the same idea.
For Wundt, the object of philosophy is "the acquisition of such
a general conception of the world and of life as will satisfy
the exigencies of the reason and the needs of the heart" --
"Gewinnung einer allgemeinen Welt -- und Lebensanschauung,
welche die Forderungen unserer Vernunft und die Bedurfnisse
unseres Gemueths befriedigen soll" (Einleit. in d. Philos.,
1901, p. 5). This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of
values (Wert lehre) is emphasized by Windelband, Dering, and
others.
The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely
prolonged. All of them affirm the eminently synthetic character
of philosophy. In the opinion of the present writer, the most
exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle. Face to
face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours
to discover what the world is, and what he is himself. Having
made the real the object of studies in detail, each of which
constitutes science (see section VIII), he is led to a study of
the whole, to inquire into the principles or reasons of the
totality of things, a study which supplies the answers to the
last Why's. The last Why of all rests upon all that is and all
that becomes: it does not apply, as in any one particular
science (e.g. chemistry), to this or that process of becoming,
or to this or that being (e.g. the combination of two bodies),
but to all being and all becoming. All being has within it its
constituent principles, which account for its substance
(constitutive material and formal causes); all becoming, or
change, whether superficial or profound, is brought about by an
efficient cause other than its subject; and lastly things and
events have their bearings from a finality, or final cause. The
harmony of principles, or causes, produces the universal order.
And thus philosophy is the profound knowledge of the universal
order, in the sense of having for its object the simplest and
most general principles, by means of which all other objects of
thought are, in the last resort, explained. By these principles,
says Aristotle, we know other things, but other things do not
suffice to make us know these principles (dia gar tauta kai ek
touton t'alla gnorizetai, all' ou tauta dia ton hupokeimenon --
Metaph., I). The expression universal order should be understood
in the widest sense. Man is one part of it: hence the relations
of man with the world of sense and with its Author belong to the
domain of philosophy. Now man, on the one hand, is the
responsible author of these relations, because he is free, but
he is obliged by nature itself to reach an aim, which is his
moral end. On the other hand, he has the power of reflecting
upon the knowledge which he acquires of all things, and this
leads him to study the logical structure of science. Thus
philosophical knowledge leads to philosophical acquaintance with
morality and logic. And hence we have this more comprehensive
definition of philosophy: "The profound knowledge of the
universal order, of the duties which that order imposes upon
man, and of the knowledge which man acquires from reality" --
"La connaissance approfondie de l'ordre universel, des devoirs
qui en resultent pour l'homme et de la science que l'homme
acquiert de la remite"' (Mercier, "Logique", 1904, p. 23). --
The development of these same ideas under another aspect will be
found in section VIII of this article.
II. DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
Since the universal order falls within the scope of philosophy
(which studies only its first principles, not its reasons in
detail), philosophy is led to the consideration of all that is:
the world, God (or its cause), and man himself (his nature,
origin, operations, moral end, and scientific activities).
It would be out of the question to enumerate here all the
methods of dividing philosophy that have been given: we confine
ourselves to those which have played a part in history and
possess the deepest significance.
A. In Greek Philosophy
Two historical divisions dominate Greek philosophy: the Platonic
and the Aristotelean.
(1) Plato divides philosophy into dialectic, physics, and
ethics. This division is not found in Plato's own writings, and
it would be impossible to fit his dialogues into the triple
frame, but it corresponds to the spirit of the Platonic
philosophy. According to Zeller, Xenocrates (314 B.C.) his
disciple, and the leading representative of the Old Academy, was
the first to adopt this triadic division, which was destined to
go down through the ages (Grundriss d. Geschichte d.
griechischen Philosophie, 144), and Aristotle follows it in
dividing his master's philosophy. Dialectic is the science of
objective reality, i.e., of the Idea (idea eidos), so that by
Platonic dialectic we must understand metaphysics. Physics is
concerned with the manifestations of the Idea, or with the Real,
in the sensible universe, to which Plato attributes no real
value independent of that of the Idea. Ethics has for its object
human acts. Plato deals with logic, but has no system of logic;
this was a product of Aristotle's genius.
Plato's classification was taken up by his school (the Academy),
but it was not long in yielding to the influence of Aristotle's
more complete division and according a place to logic. Following
the inspirations of the old Academics, the Stoics divided
philosophy into physics (the study of the real), logic (the
study of the structure of science) and morals (the study of
moral acts). This classification was perpetuated by the
neo-Platonists, who transmitted it to the Fathers of the Church,
and through them to the Middle Ages.
(2) Aristotle, Plato's illustrious disciple, the most didactic,
and at the same time the most synthetic, mind of the Greek
worid, drew up a remarkable scheme of the divisions of
philosophy. The philosophical sciences are divided into
theoretic, practical, and poetic, according as their scope is
pure speculative knowledge, or conduct (praxis), or external
production (poiesis). Theoretic philosophy comprises: (a)
physics, or the study of corporeal things which are subject to
change (achorista men all' ouk akineta) (b) mathematics, or the
study of extension, i.e., of a corporeal property not subject to
change and considered, by abstraction, apart from matter
(akineta men ou chorista d'isos, all' hos en hule); (c)
metaphysics, called theology, or first philosophy, i.e. the
study of being in its unchangeable and (whether naturally or by
abstraction) incorporeal determinations (chorista kau akinet).
Practical philosophy comprises ethics, economics, and politics,
the second of these three often merging into the last. Poetic
philosophy is concerned in general with the external works
conceived by human intelligence. To these may conveniently be
added logic, the vestibule of philosophy, which Aristotle
studied at length, and of which he may be called the creator.
To metaphysics Aristotle rightly accords the place of honour in
the grouping of philosophical studies. He calls it "first
philosophy". His classification was taken up by the Peripatetic
School and was famous throughout antiquity; it was eclipsed by
the Platonic classification during the Alexandrine period, but
it reappeared during the Middle Ages.
B. In the Middle Ages
Though the division of philosophy into its branches is not
uniform in the first period of the Middle Ages in the West, i.e.
down to the end of the twelfth century, the classifications of
this period are mostly akin to the Platonic division into logic,
ethics, and physics. Aristotle's classification of the theoretic
sciences, though made known by Boethius, exerted no influence
for the reason that in the early Middle Ages the West knew
nothing of Aristotle except his works on logic and some
fragments of his speculative philosophy (see section V below).
It should be added here that philosophy, reduced at first to
dialectic, or logic, and placed as such in the Trivium, was not
long in setting itself above the liberal arts.
The Arab philosophers of the twelfth century (Avicenna,
Averroes) accepted the Aristotelean classification, and when
their works -- particularly their translations of Aristotle's
great original treatises -- penetrated into the West, the
Aristotelean division definitively took its place there. Its
coming is heralded by Gundissalinus (see section XII), one of
the Toletan translators of Aristotle, and author of a treatise,
"De divisione philosophiae", which was imitated by Michael Scott
and Robert Kilwardby. St. Thomas did no more than adopt it and
give it a precise scientific form. Later on we shall see that,
conformably with the medieval notion of sapientia, to each part
of philosophy corresponds the preliminary study of a group of
special sciences. The general scheme of the division of
philosophy in the thirteenth century, with St. Thomas's
commentary on it, is as follows:
There are as many parts of philosophy as there are distinct domains
in the order submitted to the philosopher's reflection. Now there is
an order which the intelligence does not form but only considers;
such is the order realized in nature. Another order, the practical,
is formed either by the acts of our intelligence or by the acts of
our will, or by the application of those acts to external things in
the arts: e.g., the division of practical philosophy into logic,
moral philosophy, and aesthetics, or the philosophy of the arts ("Ad
philosophiam naturalem pertinet considerare ordinem rerum quem ratio
humana considerat sed non facit; ita quod sub naturali philosophia
comprehendamus et metaphysicam. Ordo autem quem ratio considerando
facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad rationalem philosophiam, cujus
est considerare ordinem partium orationis ad invicem et ordinem
principiorum ad invicem et ad conclusiones. Ordo autem actionum
voluntariarum pertinet ad considerationem moralis philosophiae. Ordo
autem quem ratio considerando facit in rebus exterioribus per
rationem humanam pertinet ad artes mechanicas." To natural
philosophy pertains the consideration of the order of things which
human reason considers but does not create -- just as we include
metaphysics also under natural philosophy. But the order which
reason creates of its own act by consideration pertains to rational
philosophy, the office of which is to consider the order of the
parts of speech with reference to one another and the order of the
principles with reference to one another and to the conclusions. The
order of voluntary actions pertains to the consideration of moral
philosophy, while the order which the reason creates in external
things through the human reason pertains to the mechanical arts. --
In "X Ethic. ad Nic.", I, lect. i).
The philosophy of nature, or speculative philosophy, is divided
into metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, according to the
three stages traversed by the intelligence in its effort to
attain a synthetic comprehension of the universal order, by
abstracting from movement (physics), intelligible quantity
(mathematics), being (metaphysics) (In lib. Boeth. de Trinitate,
Q. v., a. 1). In this classification it is to be noted that, man
being one element of the world of sense, psychology ranks as a
part of physics.
C. In Modern Philosophy
The Scholastic classification may be said, generally speaking,
to have lasted, with some exceptions, until the seventeenth
century. Beginning with Descartes, we find a multitude of
classifications arising, differing in the principles which
inspire them. Kant, for instance, distinguishes metaphysics,
moral philosophy, religion, and anthropology. The most widely
accepted scheme, that which still governs the division of the
branches of philosophy in teaching, is due to Wolff (1679-1755),
a disciple of Leibniz, who has been called the educator of
Germany in the eighteenth century. This scheme is as follows:
1. Logic.
2. Speculative Philosophy.
o Ontology, or General Metaphysics.
o Special Metaphysics.
# Theodicy (the study of God).
# Cosmology (the study of the World).
# Psychology (the study of Man).
3. Practical Philosophy.
o Ethics
o Politics
o Economics
Wolff broke the ties binding the particular sciences to
philosophy, and placed them by themselves; in his view
philosophy must remain purely rational. It is easy to see that
the members of Wolff's scheme are found in the Aristotelean
classification, wherein theodicy is a chapter of metaphysics and
psychology a chapter of physics. It may even be said that the
Greek classification is better than Wolff's in regard to
speculative philosophy, where the ancients were guided by the
formal object of the study -- i.e. by the degree of abstraction
to which the whole universe is subjected, while the moderns
always look at the material object -- i.e., the three categories
of being, which it is possible to study, God, the world of
sense, and man.
D. In Contemporary Philosophy
The impulse received by philosophy during the last half-century
gave rise to new philosophical sciences, in the sense that
various branches have been detached from the main stems. In
psychology this phenomenon has been remarkable: criteriology, or
epistemology (the study of the certitude of knowledge) has
developed into a special study. Other branches which have formed
themselves into new psychological sciences are: physiological
psychology or the study of the physiological concomitant of
psychic activities; didactics, or the science of teaching;
pedagogy, or the science of education; collective psychology and
the psychology of people (Volkerpsychologie), studying the
psychic phenomena observable in human groups as such, and in the
different races. An important section of logic (called also
noetic, or canonic) is tending to sever itself from the main
body, viz., methodology, which studies the special logical
formation of various sciences. On moral philosophy, in the wide
sense, have been grafted the philosophy of law, the philosophy
of society, or social philosophy (which is much the same as
sociology), and the philosophies of religion and of history.
III. THE PRINCIPAL SYSTEMATIC SOLUTIONS
From what has been said above it is evident that philosophy is
beset by a great number of questions It would not be possible
here to enumerate all those questions, much less to detail the
divers solutions which have been given to them. The solution of
a philosophic question is called a philosophic doctrine or
theory. A philosophic system (from sunistemi, put together) is a
complete and organized group of solutions. It is not an
incoherent assemblage or an encyclopedic amalgamation of such
solutions; it is dominated by an organic unity. Only those
philosophic systems which are constructed conformably with the
exigencies of organic unity are really powerful: such are the
systems of the Upanishads, of Aristotle, of neo-Platonism, of
Scholasticism, of Leibniz, Kant and Hume. So that one or several
theories do not constitute a system; but some theories, i.e.
answers to a philosophic question, are important enough to
determine the solution of other important problems of a system.
The scope of this section is to indicate some of these theories.
A. Monism, or Pantheism, and Pluralism, Individualism, or Theism
Are there many beings distinct in their reality, with one
Supreme Being, God at the summit of the hierarchy; or is there
but one reality (monas, hence monism), one All-God (pan-theos)
of whom each individual is but a member or fragment
(Substantialistic Pantheism), or else a force, or energy
(Dynamic Pantheism)? Here we have an important question of
metaphysics the solution of which reacts upon all other domains
of philosophy. The system of Aristotle, of the Scholastics, and
of Leibniz are Pluralistic and Theistic; the Indian,
neo-Platonic, and Hegelian are Monistic. Monism is a fascinating
explanation of the real, but it only postpones the difficulties
which it imagines itself to be solving (e.g. the difficulty of
the interaction of things), to say nothing of the objection,
from the human point of view, that it runs counter to our most
deep-rooted sentiments.
B. Objectivism and Subjectivism
Does being, whether one or many, possess its own life,
independent of our mind, so that to be known by us is only
accident to being, as in the objective system of metaphysics
(e.g. Aristotle, the Scholastics, Spinoza)? Or is being no other
reality than the mental and subjective presence which it
acquires in our representation of it as in the Subjective system
(e.g. Hume)? It is in this sense that the "Revue de metaphysique
et de morale" (see bibliography) uses the term metaphysics in
its title. Subjectivism cannot explain the passivity of our
mental representations, which we do not draw out of ourselves,
and which therefore oblige us to infer the reality of a non-ego.
C. Substantialism and Phenomenism
Is all reality a flux of phenomena (Heraclitus, Berkeley, Hume,
Taine), or does the manifestation appear upon a basis, or
substance, which manifests itself, and does the phenomenon
demand a noumenon (the Scholastics)? Without an underlying
substance, which we only know through the medium of the
phenomenon, certain realities, as walking, talking, are
inexplicable, and such facts as memory become absurd.
D. Mechanism and Dynamism (Pure and Modified)
Natural bodies are considered by some to be aggregations of
homogeneous particles of matter (atoms) receiving a movement
which is extrinsic to them, so that these bodies differ only in
the number and arrangement of their atoms (the Atomism, or
Mechanism, of Democritus, Descartes, and Hobbes). Others reduce
them to specific, unextended, immaterial forces, of which
extension is only the superficial manifestation (Leibniz).
Between the two is Modified Dynamism (Aristotle), which
distinguishes in bodies an immanent specific principle (form)
and an indeterminate element (matter) which is the source of
limitation and extension. This theory accounts for the specific
characters of the entities in question as well as for the
reality of their extension in space.
E. Materialism, Agnosticism, and Spiritualism
That everything real is material, that whatever might be
immaterial would be unreal, such is the cardinal doctrine of
Materialism (the Stoics, Hobbes, De Lamettrie). Contemporary
Materialism is less outspoken: it is inspired by a Positivist
ideology (see section VI), and asserts that, if anything
supra-material exists, it is unknowable (Agnosticism, from a and
gnosis, knowledge. Spencer, Huxley). Spiritualism teaches that
incorporeal, or immaterial, beings exist or that they are
possible (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics,
Descartes, Leibniz). Some have even asserted that only spirits
exist: Berkeley, Fichte, and Hegel are exaggerated
Spiritualists. The truth is that there are bodies and spirits;
among the latter we are acquainted (though less well than with
bodies) with the nature of our soul, which is revealed by the
nature of our immaterial acts, and with the nature of God, the
infinite intelligence, whose existence is demontrated by the
very existence of finite things. Side by side with these
solutions relating to the problems of the real, there is another
group of solutions, not less influential in the orientation of a
system, and relating to psychical problems or those of the human
ego.
F. Sensualism and Rationalism, or Spiritualism
These are the opposite poles of the ideogenetic question, the
question of the origin of our knowledge. For Sensualism the only
source of human knowledge is sensation: everything reduces to
transformed sensations. This theory, long ago put forward in
Greek philosophy (Stoicism, Epicureanism), was developed to the
full by the English Sensualists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and the
English Associationists (Brown, Hartley, Priestley); its modern
form is Positivism (John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Spencer, Comte,
Taine, Littre etc.). Were this theory true, it would follow that
we can know only what falls under our senses, and therefore
cannot pronounce upon the existence or non-existence, the
reality or unreality, of the super-sensible. Positivism is more
logical than Materialism. In the New World, the term Agnosticism
has been very happily employed to indicate this attitude of
reserve towards the super-sensible. Rationalism (from ratio,
reason), or Spiritualism, establishes the existence in us of
concepts higher than sensations, i.e. of abstract and general
concepts (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics,
Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin etc.). Ideologic Spiritualism
has won the adherence of humanity's greatest thinkers. Upon the
spirituality, or immateriality, of our higher mental operations
is based the proof of the spirituality of the principle from
which they proceed and, hence, of the immortality of the soul.
G. Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Criticism
So many answers have been given to the question whether man can
attain truth, and what is the foundation of certitude, that we
will not attempt to enumerate them all. Scepticism declares
reason incapable of arriving at the truth. and holds certitude
to be a purely subjective affair (Sextus Empiricus,
AEnesidemus). Dogmatism asserts that man can attain to truth,
and that, in measure to be further determined, our cognitions
are certain. The motive of certitude is, for the
Traditionalists, a Divine revelation, for the Scotch School
(Reid) it is an inclination of nature to affirm the principles
of common sense; it is an irrational, but social, necessity of
admitting certain principles for practical dogmatism (Balfour in
his "Foundations of Belief" speaks of "non-rational impulse",
while Mallock holds that "certitude is found to be the child,
not of reason but of custom" and Brunetiere writes about "the
bankruptcy of science and the need of belief"); it is an
affective sentiment, a necessity of wishing that certain things
may be verities (Voluntarism; Kant's Moral Dogmatism), or the
fact of living certain verities (contemporary Pragmatism and
Humanism William James, Schiller). But for others -- and this is
the theory which we accept -- the motive of certitude is the
very evidence of the connection which appears between the
predicate and the subject of a proposition, an evidence which
the mind perceives, but which it does not create (Moderate
Dogmatism). Lastly for Criticism, which is the Kantian solution
of the problem of knowledge, evidence is created by the mind by
means of the structural functions with which every human
intellect is furnished (the categories of the understanding). In
conformity with these functions we connect the impressions of
the senses and construct the world. Knowledge, therefore, is
valid only for the world as represented to the mind. Kantian
Criticism ends in excessive Idealism, which is also called
Subjectivism. or Phenomenalism, and according to which the mind
draws all its representations out of itself, both the sensory
impressions and the categories which connect them: the world
becomes a mental poem, the object is created by the subject as
representation (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).
H. Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism
Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism are various answers to
the question of the real objectivity of our predications, or of
the relation of fidelity existing between our general
representations and the external world.
I. Determinism and Indeterminism
Has every phenomenon or fact its adequate cause in an antecedent
phenomenon or fact (Cosmic Determinism)? And, in respect to acts
of the will, are they likewise determined in all their
constituent elements (Moral Determinism, Stoicism, Spinoza)? If
so, then liberty disappears, and with it human responsibility,
merit and demerit. Or, on the contrary, is there a category of
volitions which are not necessitated, and which depend upon the
discretionary power of the will to act or not to act and in
acting to follow freely chosen direction? Does liberty exist?
Most Spiritualists of all schools have adopted a libertarian
philosophy, holding that liberty alone gives the moral life an
acceptable meaning; by various arguments they have confirmed the
testimony of conscience and the data of common consent. In
physical nature causation and determinism rule; in the moral
life, liberty. Others, by no means numerous, have even pretended
to discover cases of indeterminism in physical nature (the
so-called Contingentist theories, e.g. Boutroux).
J. Utilitarianism and the Morality of Obligation
What constitutes the foundation of morality in our actions?
Pleasure or utility say some, personal or egoistic pleasure
(Egoism -- Hobbes, Bentham, and "the arithmetic of pleasure");
or again, in the pleasure and utility of all (Altruism -- John
Stuart Mill). Others hold that morality consists in the
performance of duty for duty's sake, the observance of law
because it is law, independently of personal profit (the
Formalism of the Stoics and of Kant). According to another
doctrine, which in our opinion is more correct, utility, or
personal advantage, is not incompatible with duty, but the
source of the obligation to act is in the last analysis, as the
very exigencies of our nature tell us, the ordinance of God.
IV. PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS
Method (meth' hodos) means a path taken to reach some objective
point. By philosophical method is understood the path leading to
philosophy, which, again, may mean either the process employed
in the construction of a philosophy (constructive method, method
of invention), or the way of teaching philosophy (method of
teaching, didactic method). We will deal here with the former of
these two senses; the latter will be treated in section XI.
Three methods can be, and have been, applied to the construction
of philosophy.
A. Experimental (Empiric, or Analytic) Method
The method of all Empiric philosophers is to observe facts,
accumulate them, and coordinate them. Pushed to its ultimate
consequences, the empirical method refuses to rise beyond
observed and observable fact; it abstains from investigating
anything that is absolute. It is found among the Materialists,
ancient and modern, and is most unreservedly applied in
contemporary Positivism. Comte opposes the "positive mode of
thinking", based solely upon observation, to the theological and
metaphysical modes. For Mill, Huxley, Bain, Spencer, there is
not one philosophical proposition but is the product, pure and
simple, of experience: what we take for a general idea is an
aggregate of sensations; a judgment is the union of two
sensations; a syllogism, the passage from particular to
particular (Mill, "A System of Logic, Rational and Inductive",
ed. Lubbock, 1892; Bain, "Logic", New York, 1874). Mathematical
propositions, fundamental axioms such as a = a, the principle of
contradiction, the principle of causality are only
"generalizations from facts of experience" (Mill, op. cit., vii,
#5). According to this author, what we believe to be superior to
experience in the enunciation of scientific laws is derived from
our subjective incapacity to conceive its contradictory;
according to Spencer, this inconceivability of the negation is
developed by heredity.
Applied in an exaggerated and exclusive fashion, the
experimental method mutilates facts, since it is powerless to
ascend to the causes and the laws which govern facts. It
suppresses the character of objective necessity which is
inherent in scientific judgments, and reduces them to collective
formulae of facts observed in the past. It forbids our
asserting, e.g., that the men who will be born after us will be
subject to death, seeing that all certitude rests on experience,
and that by mere observation we cannot reach the unchangeable
nature of things. The empirical method, left to its own
resources, checks the upward movement of the mind towards the
causes or object of the phenomena which confront it.
B. Deductive, or Synthetic a Priori, Method
At the opposite pole to the preceding, the deductive method
starts from very general principles, from higher causes, to
descend (Lat. deducere, to lead down) to more and more complex
relations and to facts. The dream of the Deductionist is to take
as the point of departure an intuition of the Absolute, of the
Supreme Reality -- for the Theists, God; for the Monists, the
Universal Being -- and to draw from this intuition the synthetic
knowledge of all that depends upon it in the universe, in
conformity with the metaphysical scale of the real. Plato is the
father of deductive philosophy: he starts from the world of
Ideas, and from the Idea of the Sovereign Good, and he would
know the reality of the world of sense only in the Ideas of
which it is the reflection. St. Augustine, too, finds his
satisfaction in studying the universe, and the least of the
beings which compose it, only in a synthetic contemplation of
God, the exemplary, creative, and final cause of all things. So,
too, the Middle Ages attached great importance to the deductive
method. "I propose", writes Boethius, "to build science by means
of concepts and maxims, as is done in mathematics." Anselm of
Canterbury draws from the idea of God, not only the proof of the
real existence of an infinite being, but also a group of
theorems on His attributes and His relations with the world. Two
centuries before Anselm, Scotus Eriugena, the father of
anti-Scholasticism, is the completest type of the Deductionist:
his metaphysics is one long description of the Divine Odyssey,
inspired by the neo-Platonic, monistic conception of the descent
of the One in its successive generations. And, on the very
threshold of the thirteenth century, Alain de Lille would apply
to philosophy a mathematical methodology. In the thirteenth
century Raymond Lully believed that he had found the secret of
"the Great Art" (ars magna), a sort of syllogism-machine, built
of general tabulations of ideas, the combination of which would
give the solution of any question whatsoever. Descartes,
Spinoza, and Leibniz are Deductionists: they would construct
philosophy after the manner of geometry (more geometrico),
linking the most special and complicated theorems to some very
simple axioms. The same tendency appears among the Ontologists
and the post-Kantian Pantheists in Germany (Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel), who base their philosophy upon an intuition of the
Absolute Being.
The deductive philosophers generally profess to disdain the
sciences of observation. Their great fault is the compromising
of fact, bending it to a preconceived explanation or theory
assumed a priori, whereas the observation of the fact ought to
precede the assignment of its cause or of its adequate reason.
This defect in the deductive method appears glaringly in a
youthful work of Leibniz's, "Specimen demonstrationum
politicarum pro rege Polonorum eligendo", published anonymously
in 1669, where he demonstrates hy geometrical methods (more
geometrico), in sixty propositions, that the Count Palatine of
Neuburg ought to be elected to the Polish Throne.
C. Analytico-Synthetic Method
This combination of analysis and synthesis, of observation and
deduction, is the only method appropriate to philosophy. Indeed,
since it undertakes to furnish a general explanation of the
universal order (see section I), philosophy ought to begin with
complex effects, facts known by observation, before attempting
to include them in one comprehensive explanation of the
universe. This is manifest in psychology, where we begin with a
careful examination of activities, notably of the phenomena of
sense, of intelligence, and of appetite; in cosmology, where we
observe the series of changes, superficial and profound, of
bodies; in moral philosophy, which sets out from the observation
of moral facts; in theodicy, where we interrogate religious
beliefs and feelings; even in metaphysics, the starting-point of
which is really existing being. But observation and analysis
once completed, the work of synthesis begins. We must pass
onward to a synthetic psychology that shall enable us to
comprehend the destinies of man's vital principle; to a
cosmology that shall explain the constitution of bodies, their
changes, and the stability of the laws which govern them; to a
synthetic moral philosophy establishing the end of man and the
ultimate ground of duty; to a theodicy and deductive metaphysics
that shall examine the attributes of God and the fundamental
conceptions of all being. As a whole and in each of its
divisions, philosophy applies the analytic-synthetic method. Its
ideal would be to give an account of the universe and of man by
a synthetic knowledge of God, upon whom all reality depends.
This panoramic view -- the eagle's view of things -- has allured
all the great geniuses. St. Thomas expresses himself admirably
on this synthetic knowledge of the universe and its first cause.
The analytico-synthetic process is the method, not only of
philosophy, but of every science, for it is the natural law of
thought, the proper function of which is unified and orderly
knowledge. "Sapientis est ordinare." Aristotle, St. Thomas,
Pascal, Newton, Pasteur, thus understood the method of the
sciences. Men like Helmholtz and Wundt adopted synthetic views
after doing analytical work. Even the Positivists are
metaphysicians, though they do not know it or wish it. Does not
Herbert Spencer call his philosophy synthetic? and does he not,
by reasoning, pass beyond that domain of the "observable" within
which he professes to confine himself?
V. THE GREAT HISTORICAL CURRENTS
Among the many peoples who have covered the globe philosophic
culture appears in two groups: the Semitic and the
Indo-European, to which may be added the Egyptians and the
Chinese. In the Semitic group (Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Aramaeans, Chaldeans) the Arabs are the most important;
nevertheless, their part becomes insignificant when compared
with the intellectual life of the Indo-Europeans. Among the
latter, philosophic life appears successively in various ethnic
divisions, and the succession forms the great periods into which
the history of philosophy is divided; first, among the people of
India (since 1500 B.C.); then among the Greeks and the Romans
(sixth century B.C. to sixth century of our era); again, much
later, among the peoples of Central and Northern Europe.
A. Indian Philosophy
The philosophy of India is recorded principally in the sacred
books of the Veda, for it has always been closely united with
religion. Its numerous poetic and religious productions carry
within themselves a chronology which enables us to assign them
to three periods.
(1) The Period of the Hymns of the Rig Veda (1500-1000 B.C.)
This is the most ancient monument of Indo-Germanic civilization;
in it may be seen the progressive appearance of the fundamental
theory that a single Being exists under a thousand forms in the
multiplied phenomena of the universe (Monism).
(2) The Period of the Brahmans (1000-500 B.C.)
This is the age of Brahminical civilization. The theory of the
one Being remains, but little by little the concrete and
anthropomorphic ideas of the one Being are replaced by the
doctrine that the basis of all things is in oneself (atman).
Psychological Monism appears in its entirety in the Upanishads:
the absolute and adequate identity of the Ego -- which is the
constitutive basis of our individuality (atman) -- and of all
things, with Brahman, the eternal being exalted above time,
space, number, and change, the generating principle of all
things in which all things are finally reabsorbed -- such the
fundamental theme to be found in the Upanishad under a thousand
variations of form. To arrive at the atman, we must not stop at
empirical reality which is multiple and cognizable; we must
pierce this husk, penetrate to the unknowable and ineffable
superessence, and identify ourselves with it in an unconscious
unity.
(3) The Post-Vedic or Sanskrit, Period (since 500 B.C.)
From the germs of theories contained in the Upanishad a series
of systems spring up, orthodox or heterodox. Of the orthodox
systems, Vedanta is the most interesting; in it we find the
principles of the Upanishads developed in an integral philosophy
which comprise metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, and ethics
(transmigration, metempsychosis). Among the systems not in
harmony with the Vedic dogmas, the most celebrated is Buddhism,
a kind of Pessimism which teaches liberation from pain in a
state of unconscious repose, or an extinction of personality
(Nirvana). Buddhism spread in China, where it lives side by side
with the doctrines of Lao Tse and that of Confucius. It is
evident that even the systems which are not in harmony with the
Veda are permeated with religious ideas.
B. Greek Philosophy
This philosophy, which occupied six centuries before, and six
after, Christ, may be divided into four periods, corresponding
with the succession of the principal lines of research (1) From
Thales of Miletus to Socrates (seventh to fifth centuries B.C.
-- preoccupied with cosmology) (2) Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle (fifth to fourth centuries B.C. -- psychology); (3)
From the death of Aristotle to the rise of neo-Platonism (end of
the fourth century B.C. to third century after Christ -- moral
philosophy); (4) neo-Platonic School (from the third century
after Christ, or, including the systems of the forerunners of
neo-Platonism, from the first century after Christ, to the end
of Greek philosophy in the seventh century-mysticism).
(1) The Pre-Socratic Period
The pre-Socratic philosophers either seek for the stable basis
of things -- which is water, for Thales of Miletus; air, for
Anaximenes of Miletus; air endowed with intelligence, for
Diogenes of Apollonia; number, for Pythagoras (sixth century
B.C.); abstract and immovable being, for the Eleatics -- or they
study that which changes: while Parmenides and the Eleatics
assert that everything is, and nothing changes or becomes.
Heraclitus (about 535-475) holds that everything becomes, and
nothing is unchangeable. Democritus (fifth century) reduces all
beings to groups of atoms in motion, and this movement,
according to Anaxagoras, has for its cause an intelligent being.
(2) The Period of Apogee: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
When the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias) had demonstrated the
insufficiency of these cosmologies, Socrates (470-399) brought
philosophical investigation to bear on man himself, studying man
chiefly from the moral point of view. From the presence in us of
abstract ideas Plato (427-347) deduced the existence of a world
of supersensible realities or ideas, of which the visible world
is but a pale reflection. These ideas, which the soul in an
earlier life contemplated, are now, because of its union with
the body, but faintly perceived. Aristotle (384-322), on the
contrary, shows that the real dwells in the objects of sense.
The theory of act and potentiality, of form and matter, is a new
solution of the relations between the permanent and the
changing. His psychology, founded upon the principle of the
unity of man and the substantial union of soul and body, is a
creation of genius. And as much may be said of his logic.
(3) The Moral Period
After Aristotle (end of the fourth Century B.C.) four schools
are in evidence: Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Aristotelean.
The Stoics (Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus), like the
Epicureans, make speculation subordinate to the quest of
happiness, and the two schools, in spite of their divergencies,
both consider happiness to be ataraxia or absence of sorrow and
preoccupation. The teachings of both on nature (Dynamistic
Monism with the Stoics, and Pluralistic Mechanism with the
Epicureans) are only a prologue to their moral philosophy. After
the latter half of the second century B.C. we perceive
reciprocal infiltrations between the various schools. This
issues in Eclecticism. Seneca (first century B.C.) and Cicero
(106-43 B.C.) are attached to Eclecticism with a Stoic basis;
two great commentators of Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes (first
century B.C.) and Alexander of Aphrodisia about 200), affect a
Peripatetic Eclecticism. Parallel with Eclecticism runs a
current of Scepticism (AEnesidemus, end of first century B.C.,
and Sextus Empiricus, second century A.D.).
(4) The Mystical Period
In the first century B.C. Alexandria had become the capital of
Greek intellectual life. Mystical and theurgic tendencies, born
of a longing for the ideal and the beyond, began to appear in a
current of Greek philosophy which originated in a restoration of
Pythagorism and its alliance with Platonism (Plutarch of
Chieronea, first century B.C.; Apuleius of Madaura; Numenius,
about 160 and others), and still more in the Graeco-Judaic
philosophy of Philo the Jew (30 B.C. to A.D. 50). But the
dominance of these tendencies is more apparent in neo-Platonism.
The most brilliant thinker of the neo-Platonic series is
Plotinus (A.D. 20-70). In his "Enneads" he traces the paths
which lead the soul to the One, and establishes, in keeping with
his mysticism, an emanationist metaphysical system. Porphyry of
Tyre (232-304), a disciple of Plotinus, popularizes his
teaching, emphasizes its religious bearing, and makes
Aristotle's "Organon" the introduction to neo-Platonic
philosophy. Later on, neo-Platonism, emphasizing its religious
features, placed itself, with Jamblichus, at the service of the
pagan pantheon which growing Christianity was ruining on all
sides, or again, as with Themistius at Constantinople (fourth
century), Proclus and Simplicius at Athens (fifth century), and
Ammonius at Alexandria, it took an Encyclopedic turn. With
Ammonius and John Philoponus (sixth century) the neo-Platonic
School of Alexandria developed in the direction of Christianity.
C. Patristic Philosophy
In the closing years of the second century and, still more, in
the third century, the philosophy of the Fathers of the Church
was developed. It was born in a civilization dominated by Greek
ideas, chiefly neo-Platonic, and on this side its mode of
thought is still the ancient. Still, if some, like St.
Augustine, attach the greatest value to the neo-Platonic
teachings, it must not be forgotten that the Monist or
Pantheistic and Emanationist ideas, which have been accentuated
by the successors of Plotinus, are carefully replaced by the
theory of creation and the substantial distinction of beings; in
this respect a new spirit animates Patristic philosophy. It was
developed, too, as an auxiliary of the dogmatic system which the
Fathers were to establish. In the third century the great
representatives of the Christian School of Alexandria are
Clement of Alexandria and Origen. After them Gregory of Nyssa,
Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, and, above all, St. Augustine
(354-430) appear. St. Augustine gathers up the intellectual
treasures of the ancient world, and is one of the principal
intermediaries for their transmission to the modern world. In
its definitive form Augustinism is a fusion of intellectualism
and mysticism, with a study of God as the centre of interest. In
the fifth century, pseudo-Dionysius perpetuates many a
neo-Platonic doctrine adapted to Christianity, and his writings
exercise a powerful influence in the Middle Ages.
D. Medieval Philosophy
The philosophy of the Middle Ages developed simultaneously in
the West, at Byzantium, and in divers Eastern centres; but the
Western philosophy is the most important. It built itself up
with great effort on the ruins of barbarism: until the twelfth
century, nothing was known of Aristotle, except some treatises
on logic, or of Plato, except a few dialogues. Gradually,
problems arose, and, foremost, in importance, the question of
universals in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries (see
NOMINALISM). St. Anselm (1O33-1109) made a first attempt at
systematizing Scholastic philosophy, and developed a theodicy.
But as early as the ninth century an anti-Scholastic philosophy
had arisen with Eriugena who revived the neo-Platonic Monism. In
the twelfth century Scholasticism formulated new anti-Realist
doctrines with Adelard of Bath, Gauthier de Mortagne, and, above
all, Abelard and Gilbert de la Porree, whilst extreme Realism
took shape in the schools of Chartres. John of Salisbury and
Alain de Lille, in the twelfth century, are the co-ordinating
minds that indicate the maturity of Scholastic thought. The
latter of these waged a campaign against the Pantheism of David
of Dinant and the Epicureanism of the Albigenses -- the two most
important forms of anti-Scholastic philosophy. At Byzantium,
Greek philosophy held its ground throughout the Middle Ages, and
kept apart from the movement of Western ideas. The same is true
of the Syrians and Arabs. But at the end of the twelfth century
the Arabic and Byzantine movement entered into relation with
Western thought, and effected, to the profit of the latter, the
brilliant philosophical revival of the thirteenth century. This
was due, in the first place, to the creation of the University
of Paris; next, to the foundation of the Dominican and
Franciscan orders; lastly, to the introduction of Arabic and
Latin translations of Aristotle and the ancient authors. At the
same period the works of Avicenna and Averroes became known at
Paris. A pleiad of brilliant names fills the thirteenth century
-- Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, Bl. Albertus Magnus, St.
Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent, Giles of
Rome, and Duns Scotus -- bring Scholastic synthesis to
perfection. They all wage war on Latin Averroism and
anti-Scholasticism, defended in the schools of Paris by Siger of
Brabant. Roger Bacon, Lully, and a group of neo-Platonists
occupy a place apart in this century, which is completely filled
by remarkable figures. In the fourteenth century Scholastic
philosophy betrays the first symptoms of decadence. In place of
individualities we have schools, the chief being the Thomist,
the Scotist, and the Terminist School of William of Occam, which
soon attracted numerous partisans. With John of Jandun,
Averroism perpetuates its most audacious propositions; Eckhart
and Nicholas of Cusa formulate philosophies which are
symptomatic of the approaching revolution. The Renaissance was a
troublous period for philosophy. Ancient systems were revived:
the Dialectic of the Humanistic philologists (Laurentius Valla,
Vives), Platonism, Aristoteleanism, Stoicism. Telesius,
Campanella, and Giordano Bruno follow a naturalistic philosophy.
Natural and social law are renewed with Thomas More and Grotius.
All these philosophies were leagued together against
Scholasticism, and very often against Catholicism. On the other
hand, the Scholastic philosophers grew weaker and weaker, and,
excepting for the brilliant Spanish Scholasticism of the
sixteenth century (Banez, Suarez, Vasquez, and so on), it may be
said that ignorance of the fundamental doctrine became general.
In the seventeenth century there was no one to support
Scholasticism: it fell, not for lack of ideas, but for lack of
defenders.
E. Modern Philosophy
The philosophies of the Renaissance are mainly negative: modern
philosophy is, first and foremost, constructive. The latter is
emancipated from all dogma; many of its syntheses are powerful;
the definitive formation of the various nationalities and the
diversity of languages favour the tendency to individualism. The
two great initiators of modern philosophy are Descartes and
Francis Bacon. The former inaugurates a spiritualistic
philosophy based on the data of consciousness, and his influence
may be traced in Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Bacon heads
a line of Empiricists, who regarded sensation as the only source
of knowledge. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a
Sensualist philosophy grew up in England, based on Baconian
Empiricism, and soon to develop in the direction of
Subjectivism. Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and David Hume mark the
stages of this logical evolution. Simultaneously an
Associationist psychology appeared also inspired by Sensualism,
and, before long, it formed a special field of research. Brown,
David Hartley, and Priestley developed the theory of association
of ideas in various directions. At the outset Sensualism
encountered vigorous opposition, even in England, from the
Mystics and Platonists of the Cambridge School (Samuel Parker
and, especially, Ralph Cudworth). The reaction was still more
lively in the Scotch School, founded and chiefly represented by
Thomas Reid, to which Adam Ferguson, Oswald, and Dugald Stewart
belonged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which
had great influence over Eclectic Spiritualism, chiefly in
America and France. Hobbes's "selfish" system was developed into
a morality by Bentham, a partisan of Egoistic Utilitarianism,
and by Adam Smith, a defender of Altruism, but provoked a
reaction among the advocates of the moral sentiment theory
(Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Samuel Clarke). In England, also,
Theism or Deism was chiefly developed, instituting a criticism
of all positive religion, which it sought to supplant with a
philosophical religion. English Sensualism spread in France
during the eighteenth century: its influence is traceable in de
Condillac, de la Mettrie, and the Encyclopedists; Voltaire
popularized it in France and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau it made
its way among the masses, undermining their Christianity and
preparing the Revolution of 1759. In Germany, the philosophy of
the eighteenth century is, directly or indirectly, connected
with Leibniz -- the School of Wolff, the Aesthetic School
(Baumgarten), the philosophy of sentiment. But all the German
philosophers of the eighteenth century were eclipsed by the
great figure of Kant.
With Kant (1724-1804) modern philosophy enters its second period
and takes a critical orientation. Kant bases his theory of
knowledge, his moral and aesthetic system, and his judgments of
finality on the structure of the mind. In the first half of the
eighteenth century, German philosophy is replete with great
names connected with Kantianism -- after it had been put through
a Monistic evolution, however -- Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel
have been called the triumvirate of Pantheism; then again,
Schopenhauer, while Herbart returned to individualism. French
philosophy in the nineteenth century is at first dominated by an
eclectic Spiritualistic movement with which the names of Maine
de Biran and, especially, Victor Cousin are associated. Cousin
had disciples in America (C. Henry), and in France he gained
favour with those whom the excesses of the Revolution had
alarmed. In the first half of the nineteenth century French
Catholics approved the Traditionalism inaugurated by de Bonald
and de Lamennais, while another group took refuge in Ontologism.
In the same period Auguste Comte founded Positivism, to which
Littre and Taine adhered, though it rose to its greatest height
in the English-speaking countries. In fact, England may be said
to have been the second fatherland of Positivism; John Stuart
Mill, Huxley, Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer expanded its
doctrines, combined them with Associationism and emphasized it
criteriological aspect, or attempted (Spencer) to construct a
vast synthesis of human sciences. The Associationist philosophy
at this time was confronted by the Scotch philosophy which, in
Hamilton, combined the teachings of Reid and of Kant and found
an American champion in Noah Porter. Mansel spread the doctrines
of Hamilton. Associationism regained favour with Thomas Brown
and James Mill, but was soon enveloped in the large conception
of Positivism, the dominant philosophy in England. Lastly, in
Italy, Hegel was for a long time the leader of
nineteenth-century philosophical thought (Vera and d'Ercole),
whilst Gioberti, the ontologist and Rosmini occupy a distinct
position. More recently, Positivism has gained numerous
adherents in Italy. In the middle of the century, a large
Krausist School existed in Spain, represented chiefly by Sanz
del Rio (d. 1869) and N. Salmeron. Balmes (181O-48), the author
of "Fundamental Philosophy" is an original thinker whose
doctrines have many points of contact with Scholasticism.
VI. CONTEMPORARY ORIENTATIONS
A. Favourite Problems
Leaving aside social questions, the study of which belongs to
philosophy in only some of their aspects, it may be said that in
the philosophic interest of the present day psychological
questions hold the first place, and that chief among them is the
problem of certitude. Kant, indeed, is so important a factor in
the destinies of contemporary philosophy not only because he is
the initiator of critical formalism, but still more because he
obliges his successors to deal with the preliminary and
fundamental question of the limits of knowledge. On the other
hand the experimental investigation of mental processed has
become the object of a new study, psycho-physiology, in which
men of science co-operate with philosophers, and which meets
with increasing success. This study figures in the programme of
most modern universities. Originating at Leipzig (the School of
Wundt) and Wuerzburg, it has quickly become naturalized in
Europe and America. In America, "The Psychological Review" has
devoted many articles to this branch of philosophy.
Psychological studies are the chosen field of the American
(Ladd, William James, Hall).
The great success of psychology has emphasized the subjective
character of aesthetics, in which hardly anyone now recognizes
the objective and metaphysical element. The solutions in vogue
are the Kantian, which represents the aesthetic judgment as
formed in accordance with the subjective, structural function of
the mind, or other psychologic solutions which reduce the
beautiful to a psychic impression (the "sympathy", or
Einfuehlung, of Lipps; the "concrete intuition" of Benedetto
Croce). These explanations are insufficient, as they neglect the
objective aspect of the beautiful -- those elements which, on
the part of the object, are the cause of the aesthetic
impression and enjoyment. It may be said that the neo-Scholastic
philosophy alone takes into account the objective aesthetic
factor.
The absorbing influence of psychology also manifests itself to
the detriment of other branches of philosophy; first of all, to
the detriment of metaphysics, which our contemporaries have
unjustly ostracized -- unjustly, since, if the existence or
possibility of a thing-in-itself is considered of importance, it
behooves us to inquire under what aspects of reality it reveals
itself. This ostracism of metaphysics, moreover, is largely due
to misconception and to a wrong understanding of the theories of
substance, of faculties, of causes etc., which belong to the
traditional metaphysics. Then again, the invasion of psychology
is manifest in logic: side by side with the ancient logic or
dialectic, a mathematical or symbolic logic has developed
(Peano, Russell, Peirce, Mitchell, and others) and, more
recently, a genetic logic which would study, not the fixed laws
of thought, but the changing process of mental life and its
genesis (Baldwin).
We have seen above (section II, D) how the increasing
cultivation of psychology has produced other scientific
ramifications which find favour with the learned world. Moral
philosophy, long neglected, enjoys a renewed vogue notably in
America, where ethnography is devoted to its service (see, e.g.,
the publications of the Smithsonian Institution). "The
International Journal of Ethics" is a review especially devoted
to this line of work. In some quarters, where the atmosphere is
Positivist, there is a desire to get rid of the old morality,
with its notions of value and of duty, and to replace it with a
collection of empiric rules subject to evolution (Sidgwick,
Huxley, Leslie Stephen, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl).
As to the history of philosophy, not only are very extended
special studies devoted to it, but more and more room is given
it in the study of every philosophic question. Among the causes
of this exaggerated vogue are the impulse given by the Schools
of Cousin and of Hegel, the progress of historical studies in
general, the confusion arising from the clash of rival
doctrines, and the distrust engendered by that confusion.
Remarkable works have been produced by Deussen, on Indian and
Oriental philosophy; by Zeller, on Greek antiquity; by Denifle,
Haureau, Baeumker, and Mandonnet, on the Middle Ages; by
Windelband, Kuno Fischer, Boutroux and Hoeffding, on the modern
period; and the list might easily be considerably prolonged.
B. The Opposing Systems
The rival systems of philosophy of the present time may be
reduced to various groups: Positivism, neo-Kantianism, Monism,
neo-Scholasticism. Contemporary philosophy lives in an
atmosphere of Phenomenism, since Positivism and neo-Kantianism
are at one on this important doctrine: that science and
certitude are possible only within the limits of the world of
phenomena, which is the immediate object of experience.
Positivism, insisting on the exclusive rights of sensory
experience, and Kantian criticism, reasoning from the structure
of our cognitive faculties, hold that knowledge extends only as
far as appearances; that beyond this is the absolute, the dark
depths, the existence of which there is less and less
disposition to deny, but which no human mind can fathom. On the
contrary, this element of the absolute forms an integral
constituent in neo-Scholasticism which has revived, with
sobriety and moderation, the fundamental notions of Aristotelean
and Medieval metaphysics, and has succeeded in vindicating them
against attack and objection.
(1) Positivism
Positivism, under various forms, is defended in England by the
followers of Spencer, by Huxley, Lewes, Tyndall, F. Harrison,
Congreve, Beesby, J. Bridges, Grant Allen (James Martineau is a
reactionary against Positivism); by Balfour, who at the same
time propounds a characteristic theory of belief, and falls back
on Fideism. From England Positivism passed over to America,
where it soon dethroned the Scottish doctrines (Carus). De
Roberty, in Russia, and Ribot, in France, are among its most
distinguished disciples. In Italy it is found in the writings of
Ferrari, Ardigo, and Morselli; in Germany, in those of Laas,
Riehl, Guyau, and Durkheim. Less brutal than Materialism, the
radical vice of Positivism is its identification of the knowable
with the sensible. It seeks in vain to reduce general ideas to
collective images, and to deny the abstract and universal
character of the mind's concepts. It vainly denies the
super-experiential value of the first logical principles in
which the scientific life of the mind is rooted; nor will it
ever succeed in showing that the certitude of such a judgment as
2 + 2 = 4 increases with our repeated addition of numbers of
oxen or of coins. In morals, where it would reduce precepts and
judgments to sociological data formed in the collective
conscience and varying with the period and the environment,
Positivism stumbles against the judgments of value, and the
supersensible ideas of obligation, moral good, and law, recorded
in every human conscience and unvarying in their essential data.
(2) Kantianism
Kantianism had been forgotten in Germany for some thirty years
(1830-60); Vogt, Buechner, and Molesehott had won for
Materialism an ephemeral vogue; but Materialism was swept away
by a strong Kantian reaction. This reversion towards Kant
(Rueckkehr zu Kant) begins to be traceable in 1860 (notably as a
result of Lange's "History of Materialism"), and the influence
of Kantian doctrines may be said to permeate the whole
contemporary German philosophy (Otto Liebmann, von Hartmann,
Paulsen, Rehmke, Dilthey, Natorp, Fueken, the Immanentists, and
the Empirico-criticists). French neo-Criticism, represented by
Renouvier, was connected chiefly with Kant's second "Critique"
and introduced a specific Voluntarism. Vacherot, Secretan,
Lachelier, Boutroux, Fouillee, and Bergson are all more or less
under tribute to Kantianism. Ravaisson proclaims himself a
follower of Maine de Biran. Kantianism has taken its place in
the state programme of education and Paul Janet, who, with F.
Bouillier and Caro, was among the last legatees of Cousin's
Spiritualism, appears, in his "Testament philosophique",
affecting a Monism with a Kantian inspiration. All those who,
with Kant and the Positivists, proclaim the "bankruptcy of
science" look for the basis of our certitude in an imperative
demand of the will. This Voluntarism, also called Pragmatism
(William James), and, quite recently, Humanism (Schiller at
Oxford), is inadequate to the establishment of the theoretic
moral and social sciences upon an unshakable base: sooner or
later, reflection will ask what this need of living and of
willing is worth, and then the intelligence will return to its
position as the supreme arbiter of certitude.
From Germany and France Kantianism has spread everywhere. In
England it has called into activity the Critical Idealism
associated with T. H. Green and Bradley. Hodgson, on the
contrary, returns to Realism. S. Laurie may be placed between
Green and Martineau. Emerson, Harris, Everett, and Royce spread
Idealistic Criticism in America; Shadworth Hodgson, on the other
hand, and Adamson tend to return to Realism, whilst James Ward
emphasizes the function of the will.
(3) Monism
With a great many Kantians, a stratum of Monistic ideas is
superimposed on Criticism, the thing in itself being considered
numerically one. The same tendencies are observable among
Positivist Evolutionists like Clifford and Romanes, or G.T.
Ladd.
(4) Neo-Scholasticism
Neo-Scholasticism, the revival of which dates from the last
third of the nineteenth century (Liberatore, Taparelli,
Cornoldi, and others), and which received a powerful impulse
under Leo XIII, is tending more and more to become the
philosophy of Catholics. It replaces Ontologism, Traditionalism,
Gunther's Dualism, and Cartesian Spiritualism, which had
manifestly become insufficient. Its syntheses, renewed and
completed, can be set up in opposition to Positivism and
Kantianism, and even its adversaries no longer dream of denying
the worth of its doctrines. The bearings of neo-Scholasticism
have been treated elsewhere (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).
VII. IS PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY INDEFINITE, OR IS THERE A PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS?
Considering the historic succession of systems and the evolution
of doctrines from the remotest ages of India down to our own
times, and standing face to face with the progress achieved by
contemporary scientific philosophy, must we not infer the
indefinite progress of philosophic thought? Many have allowed
themselves to be led away by this ideal dream. Historic Idealism
(Karl Marx) regards philosophy as a product fatally engendered
by pre-existing causes in our physical and social environment.
Auguste Comte's "law of the three states", Herbert Spencer's
evolutionism Hegel's "indefinite becoming of the soul", sweep
philosophy along in an ascending current toward an ideal
perfection, the realization of which no one can foresee. For all
these thinkers, philosophy is variable and relative: therein
lies their serious error. Indefinite progress, condemned by
history in many fields, is untenable in the history of
philosophy. Such a notion is evidently refuted by the appearance
of thinkers like Aristotle and Plato three centuries before
Christ, for these men, who for ages have dominated, and still
dominate, human thought, would be anachronisms, since they would
be inferior to the thinkers of our own time. And no one would
venture to assert this. History shows, indeed, that there are
adaptations of a synthesis to its environment, and that every
age has its own aspirations and its special way of looking at
problems and their solutions; but it also presents unmistakable
evidence of incessant new beginnings, of rhythmic oscillations
from one pole of thought to the other. If Kant found an original
formula of Subjectivism and the reine Innerlichkeit, it would be
a mistake to think that Kant had no intellectual ancestors: he
had them in the earliest historic ages of philosophy: M. Deussen
has found in the Vedic hymn of the Upanishads the distinction
between noumenon and phenomenon, and writes, on the theory of
Maya, "Kants Grunddogma, so alt wie die Philosophie" ("Die
Philos. des Upanishad's", Leipzig, 1899, p. 204).
It is false to say that all truth is relative to a given time
and latitude, and that philosophy is the product of economic
conditions in a ceaseless course of evolution, as historical
Materialism holds. Side by side with these things, which are
subject to change and belong to one particular condition of the
life of mankind, there is a soul of truth circulating in every
system, a mere fragment of that complete and unchangeable truth
which haunts the human mind in its most disinterested
investigations. Amid the oscillations of historic systems there
is room for a philosophia perennis -- as it were a purest
atmosphere of truth, enveloping the ages, its clearness somehow
felt in spite of cloud and mist. "The truth Pythagoras sought
after, and Plato, and Aristotle, is the same that Augustine and
Aquinas pursued. So far as it is developed in history, truth is
the daughter of time; so far as it bears within itself a content
independent of time, and therefore of history, it is the
daughter of eternity" [Willmann, "Gesch. d Idealismus", II
(Brunswick, 1896), 55O; cf. Commer "Die immerwahrende
Philosophie" (Vienna, 1899)]. This does not mean that essential
and permanent verities do not adapt themselves to the
intellectual life of each epoch. Absolute immobility in
philosophy, no less than absolute relativity, is contrary to
nature and to history. It leads to decadence and death. It is in
this sense that we must interpret the adage: Vita in motu.
VIII. PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENCES
Aristotle of old laid the foundation of a philosophy supported
by observation and experience. We need only glance through the
list of his works to see that astronomy, mineralogy, physics and
chemistry, biology, zoology, furnished him with examples and
bases for his theories on the constitution, of the heavenly and
terrestrial bodies, the nature of the vital principle, etc.
Besides, the whole Aristotelean classification of the branches
of philosophy (see section II) is inspired by the same idea of
making philosophy -- general science -- rest upon the particular
sciences. The early Middle Ages, with a rudimentary scientific
culture, regarded all its learning, built up on the Trivium
(grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, music), as preparation for philosophy. In
the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism came under
Aristotelean influences, it incorporated the sciences in the
programme of philosophy itself. This may be seen in regulation
issued by the Faculty of Arts of Paris 19 March, 1255, "De
libris qui legendi essent" This order prescribes the study of
commentaries or various scientific treatises of Aristotle,
notably those on the first book of the "Meteorologica", on the
treatises on Heaven and Earth, Generation, the Senses and
Sensations, Sleeping and Waking, Memory, Plants, and Animals.
Here are amply sufficient means for the magistri to familiarize
the "artists" with astronomy, botany, physiology, and zoology to
say nothing of Aristotle's "Physics", which was also prescribed
as a classical text, and which afforded opportunities for
numerous observations in chemistry and physics as then
understood. Grammar and rhetoric served as preliminary studies
to logic, Bible history, social science, and politics were
introductory to moral philosophy. Such men as Albertus Magnus
and Roger Bacon expressed their views on the necessity of
linking the sciences with philosophy and preached it by example.
So that both antiquity and the Middle Ages knew and appreciated
scientific philosophy.
In the seventeenth century the question of the relation between
the two enters upon a new phase: from this period modern science
takes shape and begins that triumphal march which it is destined
to continue through the twentieth century, and of which the
human mind is justly proud. Modern scientific knowledge differs
from that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in three important
respects: the multiplication of sciences; their independent
value; the divergence between common knowledge and scientific
knowledge. In the Middle Ages astronomy was closely akin to
astrology, chemistry to alchemy, physics to divination; modern
science has severely excluded all these fantastic connections.
Considered now from one side and again from another, the
physical world has revealed continually new aspects, and each
specific point of view has become the focus of a new study. On
the other hand, by defining their respective limits, the
sciences have acquired autonomy; useful in the Middle Ages only
as a preparation for rational physics and for metaphysics, they
are nowadays of value for themselves, and no longer play the
part of handmaids to philosophy. Indeed, the progress achieved
within itself by each particular science brings one more
revolution in knowledge. So long as instruments of observation
were imperfect, and inductive methods restricted, it was
practically impossible to rise above an elementary knowledge.
People knew, in the Middle Ages, that Wine, when left exposed to
the air, became vinegar; but what do facts like this amount to
in comparison with the complex formulae of modern chemistry?
Hence it was that an Albertus Magnus or a Roger Bacon could
flatter himself, in those days, with having acquired all the
science of his time, a claim which would now only provoke a
smile. In every department progress has drawn the line sharply
between popular and scientific knowledge; the former is
ordinarily the starting-point of the latter, but the conclusions
and teachings involved in the sciences are unintelligible to
those who lack the requisite preparation.
Do not, then, these profound modifications in the condition of
the sciences entail modifications in the relations which, until
the seventeenth century, had been accepted as existing between
the sciences and philosophy? Must not the separation of
philosophy and science widen out to a complete divorce? Many
have thought so, both scientists and philosophers, and it was
for this that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so many
savants and philosophers turned their backs on one another. For
the former, philosophy has become useless; the particular
sciences, they say, multiplying and becoming perfect, must
exhaust the whole field of the knowable, and a time will come
when philosophy shall be no more. For the philosophers,
philosophy has no need of the immeasurable mass of scientific
notions which have been acquired, many of which possess only a
precarious and provisional value. Wolff, who pronounced the
divorce of science from philosophy, did most to accredit this
view, and he has been followed by certain Catholic philosophers
who held that scientific study may be excluded from philosophic
culture.
What shall we say on this question? That the reasons which
formerly existed for keeping touch with science are a thousand
times more imperative in our day. If the profound synthetic view
of things which justifies the existence of philosophy
presupposes analytical researches, the multiplication and
perfection of those researches is certainly reason for
neglecting them. The horizon of detailed knowledge widens
incessantly; research of every kind is busy exploring the
departments of the universe which it has mapped out. And
philosophy, whose mission is to explain the order of the
universe by general and ultimate reasons applicable, not only to
a group of facts, but to the whole body of known phenomena,
cannot be indifferent to the matter which it has to explain.
Philosophy is like a tower whence we obtain the panorama of a
great city -- its plan, its monuments, its great arteries, with
the form and location of each -- things which a visitor cannot
discern while he goes through the streets and lanes, or visits
libraries, churches, palaces, and museums, one after another. If
the city grows and develops, there is all the more reason, if we
would know it as a whole, why we should hesitate to ascend the
tower and study from that height the plan upon which its new
quarters have been laid out.
It is, happily, evident that contemporary philosophy is inclined
to be first and foremost a scientific philosophy; it has found
its way back from its wanderings of yore. This is noticeable in
philosophers of the most opposite tendencies. There would be no
end to the list if we had to enumerate every case where this
orientation of ideas has been adopted. "This union", says
Boutroux, speaking of the sciences and philosophy, "is in truth
the classic tradition of philosophy. But there had been
established a psychology and a metaphysics which aspired to set
themselves up beyond the sciences, by mere reflection of the
mind upon itself. Nowadays all philosophers are agreed to make
scientific data their starting-point" (Address at the
International Congress of Philosophy in 1900; Revue de Metaph.
et de Morale, 1900, p. 697). Boutroux and many others spoke
similarly at the International Congress of Bologna (April,
1911). Wundt introduces this union into the very definition of
philosophy, which, he says, is "the general science whose
function it is to unite ia a system free of all contradictions
the knowledge acquired through the particular sciences, and to
reduce to their principles the general methods of science and
the conditions of knowledge supposed by them" ("Einleitung in
die Philosophie", Leipzig, 1901, p. 19). And R. Eucken says:
"The farther back the limits of the observable world recede, the
more conscious are we of the lack of an adequately comprehensive
explanation" -- " Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philos. u.
Lebensanschanung" (Leipzig, 1903), p. 157]. This same thought
inspired Leo XIII when he placed the parallel and harmonious
teaching of philosophy and of the sciences on the programme of
the Institute of Philosophy created by him in the University of
Louvain (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).
On their side, the scientists have been coming to the same
conclusions ever since they rose to a synthetic view of that
matter which is the object of their study. So it was with
Pasteur, so with Newton. Ostwald, professor of chemistry at
Leipzig, has undertaken to publish the "Annalen der
Naturphilosophie", a review devoted to the cultivation of the
territory which is common to philosophy and the sciences A great
many men of science, too, are engaged in philosophy without
knowing it: in their constant discussions of "Mechanism",
"Evolutionism", "Transformism", they are using terms which imply
a philosophical theory of matter.
If philosophy is the explanation as a whole of that world which
the particular sciences investigate in detail, it follows that
the latter find their culmination in the former, and that as the
sciences are so will philosophy be. It is true that objections
are put forward against this way of uniting philosophy and the
sciences. Common observation, it is said, is enough support for
philosophy. This is a mistake: philosophy cannot ignore whole
departments of knowledge which are inaccessible to ordinary
experience biology, for example, has shed a new light on the
philosophic study of man. Others again adduce the extent and the
growth of the sciences to show that scientific philosophy must
ever remain an unattainable ideal; the practical solution of
this difficulty concerns the teaching of philosophy (see section
XI).
IX. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Religion presents to man, with authority, the solution of man's
problems which also concern philosophy. Such are the questions
of the nature of God, of His relation with the visible world, of
man's origin and destiny Now religion, which precedes philosophy
in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into
consideration the points of religious doctrine. Hence the close
connection of philosophy with religion in the early stages of
civilization, a fact strikingly apparent in Indian philosophy,
which, not only at its beginning but throughout its development,
was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books
(see above). The Greeks, at least during the most important
periods of their history, were much less subject to the
influences of pagan religions; in fact, they combined with
extreme scrupulosity in what concerned ceremonial usage a wide
liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its
independent flight Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the
common people believed; Plato does not banish religious ideas
from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them entirely apart,
his God is the Actus purus, with a meaning exclusively
philosophic, the prime mover of the universal mechanism. The
Stoics point out that all things obey an irresistible fatality
and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus teaches
cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to
conclude that man can lay aside all fear of divine intervention
in mundane affairs. The question takes a new aspect when the
influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are brought to
bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish theology
(end of the first century), and, above all, neo-Platonism (third
century B.C.). A yearning for religion was stirring in the
world, and philosophy became enamoured of every religious
doctrine Plotinus (third century after Christ), who must always
remain the most perfect type of the neo-Platonic mentality,
makes philosophy identical with religion, assigning as its
highest aim the union of the soul with God by mystical ways.
This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most
bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e.g. Jamblicus
(d. about A.D. 330), who, on a foundation of neo-Platonism,
erected an international pantheon for all the divinities whose
names are known.
It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its
monotheistic dogma and its serene, purifying morality, came in
the fulness of time and appeased the inward unrest with which
souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though
Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school,
the religion which He founded supplies solutions for a group of
problems which philosophy solves by other methods (e.g. the
immortality of the soul). The first Christian philosophers, the
Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took
over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of
philosophy and religion. With them philosophy is incidental and
secondary, employed only to meet polemic needs, and to support
dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this Clement of
Alexandria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued
the same traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to
have received neo-Platonic influences through the channel of the
Fathers. John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), the most
remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion
is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true
religion" (De div. praed., I, I). But as the era advances a
process of dissociation sets in, to end in the complete
separation between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or
the study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and
Scholastic philosophy, based on purely rational investigation.
To understand the successive stages of this differentiation,
which was not completed until the middle of the thirteenth
century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of
capital importance.
(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early
Middle Ages, must be sought within the domain of theology, in
the sense that the philosophical discussions arose in reference
to theological questions. The discussion, e.g. of
transubstantiation (Berengarius of Tours), raised the problem of
substance and of change, or becoming. (2) Theology being
regarded as a superior and sacred science, the whole pedagogic
and didactic organization of the period tended to confirm this
superiority (see section XI). (3) The enthusiasm for dialectics,
which reached its maximum in the eleventh century, brought into
fashion certain purely verbal methods of reasoning bordering on
the sophistical. Anselm of Besata (Anselmus Peripateticus) is
the type of this kind of reasoner. Now the dialecticians, in
discussing theological subjects, claimed absolute validity for
their methods, and they ended in such heresies as Gottschalk's
on predestination, Berengarius's on transubstantiation, and
Roscelin's Tritheism. Berengarius's motto was: "Per omnia ad
dialecticam confugere". There followed an excessive reaction on
the part of timorous theologians, practical men before all
things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the
dialecticians. This antagonistic movement coincided with an
attempt to reform religious life. At the head of the group was
Peter Damian (1007-72), the adversary of the liberal arts; he
was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of
theology. From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle
Ages in general put philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim
was current only among a narrow circle of reactionary
theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were
Manegold of Lautenbach and Othloh of St. Emmeram, in Germany.
(4) At the same time a new tendency becomes discernible in the
eleventh century, in Lanfranc, William of Hirschau, Rodulfus
Ardens, and particularly St. Anselm of Canterbury; the
theologian calls in the aid of philosophy to demonstrate certain
dogmas or to show their rational side. St. Anselm, in an
Augustinian spirit, attempted this justification of dogma,
without perhaps invariably applying to the demonstrative value
of his arguments the requisite limitations. In the thirteenth
century these efforts resulted in a new theological method, the
dialectic.
(5) While these disputes as to the relations of philosophy and
theology went on, many philosophical questions were nevertheless
treated on their own account, as we have seen above (universals,
St. Anselm's theodicy, Abelard's philosophy, etc.).
(6) The dialectic method, developed fully in the twelfth
century, just when Scholastic theology received a powerful
impetus, is a theological, not a philosophical, method. The
principal method in theology is the interpretation of Scripture
and of authority; the dialectic method is secondary and consists
in first establishing a dogma and then showing its
reasonableness, confirming the argument from authority by the
argument from reason. It is a process of apologetics. From the
twelfth century onward, these two theological methods are fairly
distinguished by the words auctoritates, rationes. Scholastic
theology, condensed in the "summae" and "books of sentences", is
henceforward regarded as distinct from philosophy. The attitude
of theologians towards philosophy is threefold: one group, the
least influential, still opposes its introduction into theology,
and carries on the reactionary traditions of the preceding
period (e.g. Gauthier de Saint-Victor); another accepts
philosophy, but takes a utilitarian view of it, regarding it
merely as a prop of dogma (Peter Lombard); a third group, the
most influential, since it includes the three theological
schools of St. Victor, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porree, grants
to philosophy, in addition to this apologetic role, an
independent value which entitles it to be cultivated and studied
for its own sake. The members of this group are at once both
theologians and philosophers.
(7) At the opening of the thirteenth century one section of
Augustinian theologians continued to emphasize the utilitarian
and apologetic office of philosophy. But St. Thomas Aquinas
created new Scholastic traditions, and wrote a chapter on
scientific methodology in which the distinctness and in
dependence of the two sciences is thoroughly established. Duns
Scotus, again, and the Terminists exaggerated this independence.
Latin Averroism, which had a brilliant but ephemeral vogue in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, accepted whole and
entire in philosophy Averroistic Peripateticism, and, to
safeguard Catholic orthodoxy, took refuge behind the sophism
that what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and
conversely -- wherein they were more reserved than Averroes and
the Arab philosophers, who regarded religion as something
inferior, good enough for the masses, and who did not trouble
themselves about Moslem orthodoxy. Lully, going to extremes,
maintained that all dogma is susceptible of demonstration, and
that philosophy and theology coalesce. Taken as a whole, the
Middle Ages, profoundly religious, constantly sought to
reconcile its philosophy with the Catholic Faith. This bond the
Renaissance philosophy severed. In the Reformation period a
group of publicists, in view of the prevailing strife, formed
projects of reconciliation among the numerous religious bodies.
They convinced themselves that all religions possess a common
fund of essential truths relating to God, and that their content
is identical, in spite of divergent dogmas. Besides, Theism,
being only a form of Naturism applied to religion, suited the
independent ways of the Renaissance. As in building up natural
law, human nature was taken into consideration, so reason was
interrogated to discover religious ideas. And hence the wide
acceptance of Theism, not among Protestants only, but generally
among minds that had been carried away with the Renaissance
movement (Erasmus, Coornheert).
For this tolerance or religious indifferentism modern philosophy
in more than one instance substituted a disdain of positive
religions. The English Theism or Deism of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries criticizes all positive religion and, in
the name of an innate religious sense, builds up a natural
religion which is reducible to a collection of theses on the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The initiator
of this movement was Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); J. Toland
(1670-1722), Tindal (1656-1733), and Lord Bolingbroke took part
in it. This criticizing movement inaugurated in England was
taken up in France, where it combined with an outright hatred of
Catholicism. Pierre Bayle (1646-17O6) propounded the thesis that
all religion is anti-rational and absurd, and that a state
composed of Atheists is possible. Voltaire wished to substitute
for Catholicism an incoherent mass of doctrines about God. The
religious philosophy of the eighteenth century in France led to
Atheism and paved the way for the Revolution. In justice to
contemporary philosophy it must be credited with teaching the
amplest tolerance towards the various religions; and in its
programme of research it has included religious psychology, or
the study of the religious sentiment.
For Catholic philosophy the relations between philosophy and
theology, between reason and faith, were fixed, in a chapter of
scientific methodology, by the great Scholastic thinkers of the
thirteenth century. Its principles, which still retain their
vitality, are as follows:
(a) Distinctness of the two sciences.
The independence of philosophy in regard to theology, as in
regard to any other science whatsoever, is only an
interpretation of this undeniable principle of scientific
progress, as applicable in the twentieth century as it was in
the thirteenth, that a rightly constituted science derives its
formal object, its principles, and its constructive method from
its own resources, and that, this being so, it cannot borrow
from any other science without compromising its own right to
exist.
(b) Negative, not positive, material, not formal, subordination
of philosophy in regard to theology.
This means that, while the two sciences keep their formal
independence (the independence of the principles by which their
investigations are guided), there are certain matters where
philosophy cannot contradict the solutions afforded by theology.
The Scholastics of the Middle Ages justified this subordination,
being profoundly convinced that Catholic dogma contains the
infallible word of God, the expression of truth. Once a
proposition, e.g. that two and two make four, has been accepted
as certain, logic forbids any other science to form any
conclusion subversive of that proposition. The material mutual
subordination of the sciences is one of those laws out of which
logic makes the indispensable guarantee of the unity of
knowledge. "The truth duly demonstrated by one science serves as
a beacon in another science." The certainty of a theory in
chemistry imposes its acceptance on physics, and the physicist
who should go contrary to it would be out of his course.
Similarly, the philosopher cannot contradict the certain data of
theology, any more than he can contradict the certain
conclusions of the individual sciences. To deny this would be to
deny the conformity of truth with truth, to contest the
principle of contradiction, to surrender to a relativism which
is destructive of all certitude. "It being supposed that nothing
but what is true is included in this science (sc. theology) . .
. it being supposed that whatever is true by the decision and
authority of this science can nowise be false by the decision of
right reason: these things, I say, being supposed, as it is
manifest from them that the authority of this science and reason
alike rest upon truth, and one verity cannot be contrary to
another, it must be said absolutely that reason can in no way be
contrary to the authority of this Scripture, nay, all right
reason is in accord with it" (Henry of Ghent, "Summa
Theologica", X, iii, n.4).
But when is a theory certain? This is a question of fact, and
error is easy. In proportion as the principle is simple and
absolute, so are its applications complex and variable. It is
not for philosophy to establish the certitude of theological
data, any more than to fix the conclusions of chemistry or of
physiology. The certainty of those data and those conclusions
must proceed from another source. "The preconceived idea is
entertained that a Catholic savant is a soldier in the service
of his religious faith, and that, in his hands, science is but a
weapon to defend his Credo. In the eyes of a great many people,
the Catholic savant seems to be always under the menace of
excommunication, or entangled in dogmas which hamper him, and
compelled, for the sake of loyalty to his Faith, to renounce the
disinterested love of science and its free cultivation"
(Mercier, "Rapport sur les etudes super. de philos.", 1891, p.
9). Nothing could be more untrue.
X. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY
The principles which govern the doctrinal relations of
philosophy and theology have moved the Catholic Church to
intervene on various occasions in the history of philosophy. As
to the Church's right and duty to intervene for the purpose of
maintaining the integrity of theological dogma and the deposit
of faith, there is no need of discussion in this place. It is
interesting, however, to note the attitude taken by the Church
towards philosophy throughout the ages, and particularly in the
Middle Ages, when a civilization saturated with Christianity had
established extremely intimate relations between theology and
philosophy.
A. The censures of the Church have never fallen upon philosophy
as such, but upon theological applications, judged false, which
were based upon philosophical reasonings. John Scotus Eriugena,
Roscelin, Berengarius, Abelard, Gilbert de la Porree were
condemned because their teachings tended to subvert theological
dogmas. Eriugena denied the substantial distinction between God
and created things; Roscelin held that there are three Gods;
Berengarius, that there is no real transubstantiation in the
Eucharist; Abelard and Gilbert de la Porree essentially modified
the dogma of the Trinity. The Church, through her councils,
condemned their theological errors; with their philosophy as
such she does not concern herself. "Nominalism", says Haureau,
"is the old enemy. It is, in fact, the doctrine which, because
it best accords with reason, is most remote from axioms of
faith. Denounced before council after council, Nominalism was
condemned in the person of Abelard as it had been in the person
of Roscelin" (Hist. philos. scol., I, 292).
No assertion could be more inaccurate. What the Church has
condemned is neither the so-called Nominalism, nor Realism, nor
philosophy in general, nor the method of arguing in theology,
but certain applications of that method which are judged
dangerous, i.e. matters which are not philosophical. In the
thirteenth century a host of teachers adopted the philosophical
theories of Roscelin and Abelard, and no councils were convoked
to condemn them. The same may be said of the condemnation of
David of Dinant (thirteenth century), who denied the distinction
between God and matter, and of various doctrines condemned in
the fourteenth century as tending to the negation of morality.
It has been the same in modern times. To mention only the
condemnation of Gunther, of Rosmini, and of Ontologism in the
nineteenth century, what alarmed the Church was the fact that
the theses in question had a theologic: bearing.
B. The Church has never imposed any philosophical system, though
she has anathematized many doctrines, or branded them as
suspect. This corresponds with the prohibitive, but not
imperative attitude of theology in regard to philosophy. To take
one example, faith teaches that the world was created in time;
and yet St. Thomas maintains that the concept of eternal
creation (ab aeterno) involves no contradiction. He did not
think himself obliged to demonstrate creation in time: his
teaching would have been heterodox only if, with the Averroists
his day, he had maintained the necessary eternity of the world.
It may, perhaps, be objected that many Thomistic doctrines were
condemned in 1277 by Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris. But it is
well to note, and recent works on the subject have abundantly
proved this, that Tempier's condemnation, in so far as it
applied to Thomas Aquinas, was the issue of intrigues and
personal animosity, and that, in canon law, it had no force
outside of the Diocese of Paris. Moreover, it was annulled by
one of Tempier's successors, Etienne de Borrete, in 1325.
C. The Church has encouraged philosophy. To say nothing of the
fact that all those who applied themselves to science and
philosophy in the Middle Ages were churchmen, and that the
liberal arts found an asylum in capitular and monastic schools
until the twelfth century, it is important to remark that the
principal universities of the Middle Ages were pontifical
foundations. This was the case with Paris. To be sure, in the
first years of the university's aquaintance with the
Aristotelean encyclopaedia (late twelfth century) there were
prohibitions against reading the "Physics", the "Metaphysics",
and the treatise "On the Soul". But these restrictions were of a
temporary character and arose out of particular circumstanccs.
In 1231, Gregory IX laid upon a commission of three consultors
the charge to prepare an amended edition of Aristotle "ne utile
per inutile vitietur" (lest what is useful suffer damage through
what is useless). The work of expurgatio. was done, in point of
fact, by the Albertine-Thomist School, and, beginning from the
year 1255, the Faculty of Arts, with the knowledge of the
ecclesiastical authority, ordered the teaching of all the books
previously prohibited (see Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant et
l'averroisme latin au XIIIe s.", Louvain 1910). It might also be
shown how in modern times and in our own day the popes have
encouraged philosophic studies. Leo XIII, as is well known,
considered the restoration of philosophic Thomism on of the
chief tasks of his pontificate.
XI. THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY
The methods of teaching philosophy have varied in various ages.
Socrates used to interview his auditors, and hold symposia in
the market-place, on the porticoes and in the public gardens.
His method was interrogation, he whetted the curiosity of the
audience and practised what had become known as Socratic irony
and the maieutic art (maieutike techne), the art of delivering
minds of their conceptions. His successor opened schools
properly so called, and from the place occupied by these schools
several systems took their names (the Stoic School, the Academy,
the Lyceum). In the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth
century the learned language was Latin. The German discourses of
Eckhart are mentioned as merely sporadic examples. From the
ninth to the twelfth century teaching was confined to the
monastic and cathedral schools. It was the golden age of
schools. Masters and students went from one school to another:
Lanfranc travelled over Europe; John of Salisbury (twelfth
century) heard at Paris all the then famous professors of
philosophy; Abelard gathered crowds about his rostrum. Moreover:
as the same subjects were taught everywhere, and from the same
text-books, scholastic wanderings were attended with few
disadvantages. The books took the form of commentaries or
monographs. From the time of Abelard a method came into use
which met with great success, that of setting forth the pros and
cons of a question, which was later perfected by the addition of
a solutio. The application of this method was extended in the
thirteenth century (e.g. in the "Summa theologica" of St.
Thomas). Lastly, philosophy being an educational preparation for
theology, the "Queen of the Sciences", philosophical and
theological topics were combined in one and the same book, or
even in the same lecture.
At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the
thirteenth, the University of Paris was organized, and
philosophical teaching was concentrated in the Faculty of Arts.
Teaching was dominated by two principles: internationalism and
freedom. The student was an apprentice-professor: after
receiving the various degrees, he obtained from the chancellor
of the university a licence to teach (licentia docendi). Many of
the courses of this period have been preserved, the abbreviated
script of the Middle Ages being virtually a stenographic system.
The programme of courses drawn up in 1255 is well known: it
comprises the exegesis of all the books of Aristotle. The
commentary, or lectio (from legere, to read), is the ordinary
form of instruction (whence the German Vorlesungen and the
English lecture). There were also disputations, in which
questions were treated by means of objections and answers; the
exercise took a lively character, each one being invited to
contribute his thoughts on the subject. The University of Paris
was the model for all the others, notably those of Oxford and
Cambridge. These forms of instruction in the universities lasted
as long as Aristoteleanism, i.e. until the seventeenth century.
In the eighteenth century -- the siecle des lumieres
(Erklaerung) -- philosophy took a popular and encyclopedic form,
and was circulated in the literary productions of the period. In
the nineteenth century it resumed its didactic attitude in the
universities and in the seminaries, where, indeed its teaching
had long continued. The advance of philological and historical
studies had a great influence on the character of philosophical
teaching: critical methods were welcomed, and little by little
the professors adopted the practice of specializing in this or
that branch of philosophy -- a practice which is still in vogue.
Without attempting to touch on all the questions involved in
modern methods of teaching philosophy, we shall here indicate
some of the principal features.
A. The Language of Philosophy
The earliest of the moderns -- as Descartes or Leibniz -- used
both Latin and the vernacular, but in the nineteenth century
(except in ecclesiastical seminaries and in certain academical
exercises mainly ceremonial in character) the living languages
supplanted Latin; the result has been a gain in clearness of
thought and interest and vitality of teaching. Teaching in Latin
too often contents itself with formulae: the living language
effects a better comprehension of things which must in any case
be difficult. Personal experience, writes Fr. Hogan, formerly
superior of the Boston Seminary, in his "Clerical Studies"
(Philadelphia, 1895-1901), has shown that among students who
have learned philosophy, particularly Scholastic, only in Latin,
very few have acquired anything more than a mass of formulae,
which they hardly understand; though this does not always
prevent their adhering to their formulae through thick and thin.
Those who continue to write in Latin -- as many Catholic
philosophers, often of the highest worth, still do -- have the
sad experience of seeing their books confined to a very narrow
circle of readers.
B. Didactic Processes
Aristotle's advice, followed by the Scholastics, still retains
its value and its force: before giving the solution of a
problem, expound the reasons for and against. This explains, in
particular, the great part played by the history of philosophy
or the critical examination of the solutions proposed by the
great thinkers. Commentary on a treatise still figures in some
special higher courses; but contemporary philosophical teaching
is principally divided according to the numerous branches of
philosophy (see section II). The introduction of laboratories
and practical seminaries (seminaires practiques) in
philosophical teaching has been of the greatest advantage. Side
by side with libraries and shelves full of periodicals there is
room for laboratories and museums, once the necessity of
vivifying philosophy by contact with the sciences is admitted
(see section VIII). As for the practical seminary, in which a
group of students, with the aid of a teacher, investigate to
some special problem, it may be applied to any branch of
philosophy with remarkable results. The work in common, where
each directs his individual efforts towards one general aim,
makes each the beneficiary of the researches of all; it
accustoms them to handling the instruments of research,
facilitates the detection of facts, teaches the pupil how to
discover for himself the reasons for what he observes, affords a
real experience in the constructive methods of discovery proper
to each subject, and very often decides the scientific vocation
of those whose efforts have been crowned with a first success.
C. The Order of Philosophical Teaching
One of the most complex questions is: With what branch ought
philosophical teaching to begin, and what order should it
follow? In conformity with an immemorial tradition, the
beginning is often made with logic. Now logic, the science of
science, is difficult to understand and unattractive in the
earliest stages of teaching. It is better to begin with the
sciences which take the real for their object: psychology,
cosmology, metaphysics, and theodicy. Scientific logic will be
better understood later on; moral philosophy presupposes
psychology; systematic history of philosophy requires a
preliminary acquaintance with all the branches of philosophy
(see Mercier, "Manuel de philosophie", Introduction, third
edition, Louvain, 1911).
Connected with this question of the order of teaching is
another: viz. What should be the scientific teaching preliminary
to philosophy? Only a course in the sciences specially
appropriate to philosophy can meet the manifold exigencies of
the problem. The general scientific courses of our modern
universities include too much or too little: "too much in the
sense that professional teaching must go into numerous technical
facts and details with which philosophy has nothing to do; too
little, because professional teaching often makes the
observation of facts its ultimate aim, whilst, from our
standpoint, facts are, and can be, only a means, a
starting-point, towards acquiring a knowledge of the most
general causes and laws" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les etudes
superieures de philosophie", Louvain, 1891, p. 25). M. Boutroux,
a professor at the Sorbonne, solves the problem of philosophical
teaching at the university in the same sense, and, according to
him, the flexible and very liberal organization of the faculty
of philosophy should include "the whole assemblage of the
sciences, whether theoretic, mathematico-physical, or
philologico-historical" ("Revue internationale de
l'enseignement", Paris, 1901, p. 51O). The programme of courses
of the Institute of Philosophy of Louvain is drawn up in
conformity with this spirit.
XII. BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL WORKS. -- MERCIER, Cours de philosophie. Logique.
Criteriologie generale. Ontologie. Psychologie (Louvain,
1905-10); NYS, Cosmologie (Louvain, 1904); Stonyhurst
Philosophical Series: -- CLARKE, Logic (London, 1909); JOHN
RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge (London, 1901); JOSEPH
RICKABY, Moral Philosophy (London, 1910); BOEDDER, Natural
Theology (London, 1906); MAHER, Psychology (London, 1909); JOHN
RICKABY, General Metaphysics (London, 1909); WALKER, Theories of
Knowledge (London, 1910--); ZIGLIARA, Summa philos. (Paris);
SCHIFFINI, Principia philos. (Turin); URRABURU, Institut.
philosophiae (Valladolid); IDEM, Compend. phil. schol. (Madrid);
Philosophia Locensis: -- PASCH, Inst. Logicales (Freiburg,
1888); IDEM, Inst. phil. natur. (Freiburg, 1880); IDEM, Inst.
psychol. (Freiburg, 1898); HONTHEIM, Inst. theodicaeae; MEYER,
Inst. iuris notur.; DOMET DE VORGEs, Abrege de metaophysique
(Paris); FAROES, Etudes phil. (Paris); GUTBERLET, Lehrbuch der
Philos. Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Algemeine Metaphys.,
Naturphilos., Die psychol., Die Theodicee, Ethik u. Naturrecht,
Ethik u. Religion (Muenster, 1878-85); RABIER, Lec,ons de phil.
(Paris); WINDELBAND with the collaboration of LIEBMANN, WUNDT,
LIPPS, BAUSH, LASK, RICKERT, TROELTSCH, and GROOS, Die Philos.
im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhund. (Heidelberg); Systematische
Philosophie by DILTHEY, RIEHL, WUNDT, OSTWALD, EBBINGHAUS,
EUCKEM, PAULSEN, and MUNCH; LIPPS, Des Gesamtwerkers, Die Kultur
der Gegenwaert (Leipzig), pt. I, vi; DE WULF, tr. COFFEY,
Scholasticism Old and New. An Introduction to Neo-Scholastic
Philosophy (Dublin, 1907); KULPE, Einleitung in die Philos.
(Leipzig); WUNDT, Einleitung in die Philos. (Leipzig); HARPER,
The Metaphysics of the School (London, 1879-84).
DICTIONARIES. -- BALDWIN, Dict. of Philosophy and Psychology
(London, 1901-05); FRANCE, Dict. des sciences Phil. (Paris,
1876); EISLER, Woerterbuch der Philosoph. Begriffe (Berlin,
1899); Vocabulaire technique et critique de Phil., in course of
publication by the Soc. franc,aise do philosophie.
COLLECTIONS. -- Bibliotheque de l'Institut superieur de
Philosophie; PEILLAUBE, Bibl. de Phil. experimentale (Paris);
RIVIERE, Bibl. de Phil. contemporaine (Paris); Coll. historique
des grands Philosophes (Paris); LE BON, Bibl. de Philosophie
scientif. (Paris); PIAT, Les grands Philosophes (Paris);
Philosophische Bibliothek (Leipzig).
PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS. -- Mind, a quarterly review of
psychology and Philosophy (London, 1876--); The Philosoph. Rev.
(New York, 1892--); Internat. Jour. of Ethics (Philadelphia);
Proc. of Aristotelian Society (London, 1888--); Rev.
Neo-scholastique de Phil. (Louvain, 1894--); Rev. des sciences
phil. et theol. (Paris) Revue Thomiste (Toulouse, 1893--);
Annales de Philosophie Chret. (Paris, 1831--); Rev. de Philos.
(Paris); Philosophisches Jahrbuch (Fulda); Zeitschr. fuer
Philos. und Philosophische Kritik, formerly Fichte-Utrisische
Zeitschr. (Leipzig, 1847--); Kantstudien (Berlin, 1896--); Arch.
f. wissehoftliche Philos. und Soziologie (Leipzig, 1877--);
Arch. f. systematische Philos. (Berlin, 1896); Arch. f. Gesch.
d. Philos. (Berlin, 1888--); Rev. Phil. de la France et de
l'Etranger (Paris, 1876--); Rev. de metaph. et de morale (Paris,
1894--); Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam, 1907--); Riv.
di filosofio neo-scholastico (Florence, 1909--); Rivisto di
filosofia (Modena).
DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY. -- Methods. -- MARIETAN, Le probeme de
la classification des sciences d'Aristote d S. Thomas (Paris,
1901); WILLMANN, Didaktik (Brunswick, 1903).
GENERAL HISTORY. -- UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philosophy, tr. HARRIS
(New York, 1875-76); ERDMANN, Hist. of Phil. (London, 1898);
WINDELBAND, Hist. of Phil. (New York, 1901); TURNER, Hist. of
Phil. (Boston, 1903); WILLMANN, Gesch. des Idealismus
(Brunswick, 1908); ZELLER, Die Philos. der Griechen (Berlin),
tr. ALLEYNE, RETEHEL, GOODWIN, COSTELLOE, and MUIRHEAD (London);
DE WULF, Hist. of Mediaeval Phil. (London, 1909; Paris,
Tubingen, and Florence, 1912); WINDELRAND, Gesch. der neueren
Philos. (Leipzig, 1872-80), tr. TUFTS (New York, 1901);
HOFFDING, Den nyere Filosofis Historie (Copenhagen, 1894), tr.
MAYER, A Hist. of Mod. Phil. (London, 1900); FISHER, Geschichte
der neueren Philosophie (Heidelberg, 1889-1901); STOeCKL,
Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (Mainz, 1888; tr. in
part by FINLAY, Dublin, 1903); WEBER, History of Philosophy, tr.
THILLY (New York, 1901).
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. -- EUCKEN, Geistige Stroemungen der
Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1901); WINDELBAND, Die Philos. im Beginn d.
XX. Jahr., I (Heidelberg); CALDERON, Les courants phil. dans
l'Amerique Latine (Heidelberg, 1909); CEULEMANS, Le mouvement
phil. en Amerique in Rev. neo-scholast. (Nov., 1909); BAUMANN,
Deutsche u. ausserdeutsche Philos. der letzen Jahrzehnte (Gotha,
1903).
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. -- HEITZ, Essai hist. sur les rapp.
entre la philosophie et la foi de Berenger de Tours `a S. Thomas
(Paris, 1909); BRUNHES, La foi chret. et la pil. au temps de la
renaiss. caroling. (Paris, 1903); GRABMANN, Die Gesch. der
scholast. methode (Freiburg, 1909).
MAURICE DE WULF
Philoxenus
Philoxenus
(AKHSENAYA) OF MABBOGH.
Born at Tahal, in the Persian province of Beth-Garmai in the
second quarter of the fifth century; died at Gangra, in
Paphlagonia, 523. He studied at Edessa when Ibas was bishop of
that city (435-57). Shortly after he joined the ranks of the
Monophysites and became their most learned and courageous
champion. In 485 he was appointed Bishop of Hierapolis, or
Mabbogh (Manbidj) by Peter the Fuller. He continued to attack
the Decrees of Chalcedon and to defend the "Henoticon" of Zeno.
He twice visited Constantinople in the interests of his party,
and in 512 he persuaded the Emperor Anastasius to depose Flavian
of Antioch and to appoint Severus in his stead. His triumph,
however, was short-lived. Anastasius died in 518 and was
succeeded by the orthodox Justin I. By a decree of the new ruler
the bishops who had been deposed under Zeno and Anastasius were
restored to their sees, and Philoxenus, with fifty-three other
Monophysites, was banished. He went to Philippopolis, in Thrace,
and afterwards to Gangra where he was murdered.
Philoxenus is considered one of the greatest masters of Syriac
prose. He wrote treatises on liturgy, exegesis, moral and
dogmatic theology, besides many letters which are important for
the ecclesiastical history of his time. Notice must be taken of
the Philoxenian Syriac version of the Holy Scriptures. This
version was not Philoxenus's own work, but was made, upon his
request and under his direction, by the chorepiscopus Polycarp
about 505. It seems to have been a free revision of the Peshitta
according to the Lucian recension of the Septuagint. It is not
known whether it extended to the whole Bible. Of the Philoxenian
version of the Old Testament we have only a few fragments of the
Book of Isaias (xxviii, 3-17; xlii, 17-xlix, 18, lxvi, 11-23)
preserved in Syr. manuscripts Add. 17106 of the British Museum,
and published by Ceriani. Of the New Testament we have the
Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of
St. John and the Epistle of St. Jude, all of which are printed
in our Syriac Bibles. There remain also a few fragments of the
Epistles of St. Paul (Rom., vi, 20; I Cor., i, 28; II Cor., vii,
13; x, 4; Eph., vi, 12), first published by Wiseman from Syr.
MS. 153 of the Vatican. Gwynn is of the opinion that the Syriac
text of the Apocalypse published by himself in 1897 probably
belongs to the original Philoxenian.
DUVAL, Litterature Syriaque (3rd ed., Paris, 1907); WRIGHT, A
Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1894); ASSEMANI,
Bibliotheca Orientalis, II (Rome, 1719); WISEMAN, Horae Syriacae
(Rome, 1828); CERIANI, Monumenta sacra et profana, V (Milan,
1868); RENAUDOT, Liturgiarum orientalium Collectio, II
(Frankfort, 1847); MARTIN, Syro-Chaldaicae Institutiones (1873);
GUIDI, La Lettera di Filosseno ai monaci di Tell Adda (Rome,
1886); FROTHINGHAM, Stephen bar Sudaili, the Syrian Mystic and
the Book of Hierotheos (Leyden, 1886); WALLIS-BUDGE, The
Discourses of Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabbogh (2 vols., London,
1894); VASCHALDE, Three Letters of Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabbogh
(485-519): being the letter to the monks, the first letter to
the monks of Beth-Gaugal, and the letter to Emperor Zeno, with
an English translation, and an introduction to the life, works,
and doctrine of Philoxenus (Rome, 1902); IDEM, Philoxeni
Mabbugens is Tractatus de Trinitate et Incarnatione in Corpus,
Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Paris, 1907); GWYNN, The
Apocalypse of St. John in a Syria Version hitherto unknown
(Dublin, 1897); IDEM, Remnants of the later Syriac Versions of
the Bible (Oxford, 1909); BAETHGEN, Philoxenus von Mabug uber
den Glaubenin Zeitschrift fur Kirchgeschichte, V (1882), 122-38.
A. VASCHLADE
Titular See of Phocaea
Phocaea
A titular see in Asia, suffragan of Ephesus. The town of Phocaea
was founded in the eleventh century b.c. by colonists from
Phocidia led by two Athenians. They settled first on a small
island on the neighbouring coast, a territory given by the
Cymaeans, between the Bays of Cymaeus and Hermaeus, 23 miles
north of Smyrna. It was admitted to the Ionian Confederation
after having accepted kings of the race of Codrus. Its fine
position, its two ports, and the enterprising spirit of the
inhabitants made it one of the chief maritime cities of ancient
times. Historians speak of it but rarely before the Roman wars
against Antiochus, The praetor AEmilius Regillus took possession
of the town (189 b.c.); he disturbed neither its boundaries nor
its laws. During the war against Aristonicus, who reclaimed the
throne of Pergamum, the Phocaeans took his part and, through the
intervention of Massilia, escaped being severely punished by the
Romans. At the time the latter had definitively established his
power in Asia, Phocaea was only a commercial town; its money was
coined until the time of the later Empire; but its harbour
gradually silted up and the inhabitants abandoned it. In 978
Theodore Carentenus built Bardas Sclerus near Phocaea. In 1090
the Turk Tchaga of Smyrna took possession of it for a short
time. The Venetians traded there after 1082, but the Genoese
quickly supplanted them.
In 1275 Michael VIII Palaeologus gave Manuel Zaccaria the
territory of the city and the right to exploit the neighbouring
alum mines. In 1304 the Genoese, with the co-operation of the
Greeks of the adjoining towns, erected a fortress to defend the
town against the Turks, and some distance from the ancient
Phocaea founded a city which they called New Phocaea. In 1336
Andronicus the Young, allied with Saroukhan, Sultan of Magnesia,
besieged the two towns and obliged them to pay the tribute
stipulated in 1275. They continued also to pay annually to
Saroukhan 500 ducats. From 1340 to 1345 the Greeks occupied the
two towns, and again in 1358 for a short period. At the time of
the invasion of Timur in 1403, they purchased peace by the
payment of money. In the midst of difficulties the Genoese
colony continued until the end of 1455, when it passed into the
hands of the Turks. In 1650 a naval battle between the Turks and
Venetians took place in sight of Phocaea. To-day Phocaea, in
Turkish Fotchatin, or Eski Fotcha (ancient Phocaea), is the
capital of a caza of the vilayet of Smyrna, has about 6000
inhabitants (4500 Greeks), and exports salt. About six miles to
the north, Yeni Fotcha (new Phocaea) is situated on the Gulf of
Tchandarli; it has 4500 inhabitants (3500 Greeks), and exports
agricultural products.
Seven Greek bishops of Phocaea are known by their signatures at
the Councils; Mark, at Sardica (344); Theoctistus, at Ephesus
(441); Quintus, at Chalcedon (451); John, at Constantinople
(692); Leo, at Nice (787); Nicetas, at Constantinople (869);
Paul, at Constantinople (879). In 1387 ancient Phocaea was
separated from Ephesus and given to the suffragan of Smyrna. In
1403 it still had a titular. The Genoese colony had its Latin
bishops, seven of whose names are recorded from 1346 to 1475;
the later ones were undoubtedly non-residents: Bartholomew,
1346; John, 1383; John, before 1427; Nicholas, 1427; Ludovicus,
about 1450; Stephanus, 1457; AEgidius, 1475.
LE QUIEN, Oriens christ., I, 735; III, 1077; TEXIER, Asie
mineure, 371-5; THISQUEN, Phocaica (Bonn, 1842); DE MASLATRIE,
Tresor de chronologie (Paris, 1889), 1787; TOMASCHEK, Zur
historischen Topographie von Kleinasien im Mittelalter (Vienna,
1891), 25-27; WAECHTER, Der Verfall des Griechentums in
Kleinasien im XIV. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1903), 63; CUINET, La
Turquie d'Asie, III, 478-85.
S. PETRIDES.
Phoenecia
Phoe;nicia
Phoe;nicia is a narrow strip of land, about one hundred and
fifty miles long and thirty miles wide, shut in between the
Mediterranean on the west and the high range of Lebanon on the
east, and consisting mostly of a succession of narrow valleys,
ravines, and hills, the latter descending gradually towards the
sea. On the north it is bounded by the River Orontes and Mount
Casius, and by Mount Carmel on the south. The land is fertile
and well irrigated by numerous torrents and streams deriving
their waters mainly from the melting snows and rain-storms of
the winter and spring seasons. The principal vegetation consists
of the renowned cedars of Lebanon, cypresses, pines, palms,
olive, vine, fig, and pomegranates. On this narrow strip of
land, the Phoe;nicians had twenty-five cities of which the most
important were Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Byblus, Marathus, and
Tripolis. Less important were Laodicea, Simyra, Arca, Aphaca,
Berytus, Ecdippa, Akko, Dor, Joppa, Gabala, Betrys, and Sarepta.
The name "Phoe;nicia" is in all probability of Greek origin,
phoiniks being a Greek derivative of phoinos, blood-red. Our
principal sources of information concerning Phoe;nicia are:
first, numerous Phoe;nician inscriptions found in Phoe;nicia,
Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Sicily, Spain, Africa, Italy, and France,
and published in the "Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum", the
oldest being a simple one of the ninth century b.c.; the rest of
little historical value, and of comparatively late date, i.e.,
from the fourth century b.c. down; second, Egyptian and
Assyro-Babylonian historical inscriptions, especially the
Tell-el-Amarna letters of the fifteenth century b.c., in which
are found frequent and valuable references to Phoe;nicia and its
political relations with Western Asia and Egypt; the Old
Testament, especially in III Kings, v, xvi; Isaias, xxiii;
Jeremias, xxv, xxvii, and Ezechiel, xxvi-xxxii; finally, some
Greek and Latin historians and writers, both ecclesiastical and
pagan.
The oldest historical references to Phoe;nicia are found in the
Egyptian inscriptions of the Pharaohs, Aahmes (1587-62 b.c.) and
his successors Thothmes I (1541-16 b.c.), and Thothmes III
(1503-1449 b.c.) in which the Phoe;nicians are called "Dahe" or
"Zahi", and "Fenkhu". In the Tell-el-Amarna letters is found
much interesting information concerning their cities and
especially Tyre, famous for her wealth. During all this period
Egyptian suzerainty was more or less effective. Sidon was
gradually eclipsed by the rising power and wealth of Tyre,
against which the Philistines were powerless, though they
constantly attacked the former. About the year 1250, after
conquering Ashdod, Askelon, Ekron, Gaza, and Gath, they forced
the Sidonians to surrender the city of Dor. At this time Tyre
became foremost in Phoe;nicia and one of the greatest and
wealthiest cities of the Mediterranean region. Its first king
was Hiram, the son of Abi-Baal and contemporary of David and
Solomon. His reign lasted some forty years, and to his energy
Tyre owed much of its renown. He enlarged the city, surrounding
it with massive walls, improved its harbours, and rebuilt the
temple of Melkarth. He forced the Philistine pirates to retreat,
thus securing prosperity in maritime commerce and caravan trade,
and Phoe;nician colonization spread along the coast of Asia
Minor, Sicily, Greece, and Africa. He established a commercial
alliance with the Hebrews, and his Phoe;nician artists and
craftsmen greatly aided them in building the temple, and palaces
of Solomon. He quelled the revolt in Utica and established
Phoe;nician supremacy in North Africa where Carthage, the most
important of all Phoe;nician colonies, was later built.
Hiram was succeeded in 922 by his son Abd-Starte I, who, after
seven years of troubled reign, was murdered, and most of his
successors also met with a violent end. About this time
hostilities arose between Phoe;nicia and Assyria, although two
centuries earlier Tiglath-pileser I, when marching through the
northern part of Phoe;nicia, was hospitably entertained by the
inhabitants of Aradus. In 880 Ithbaal became King of Phoe;nicia,
contemporaneous with Asshur-nasir-pal in Assyria and Achab in
Israel. He was succeeded by Baal-azar and Metten I. Metten
reigned for nine years and died, leaving Pygmalion, an infant
son, but nominating as his successor Sicharbas, the high priest
of Melkarth, who was married to Elissa, his daughter. The tale
runs that when Pygmalion came to manhood he killed Sicharbas,
upon which Elissa, with such nobles as adhered to her, fled
first to Cyprus and afterwards to Africa, where the colony of
Carthage was founded (c. 850 b.c.). Asshur-nasir-pal and his son
and successor Shalmaneser II nominally conquered Phoe;nicia; but
in 745 b.c. Tiglath- pileser III compelled the northern tribes
to accept Assyrian governors. As soon as this scheme of complete
absorption became manifest a general conflict ensued, from which
Assyria emerged victorious and several Phoe;nician cities were
captured and destroyed. The invasion of Shalmaneser IV in 727
was frustrated, but in 722 he almost sacked the city of Tyre.
Sargon, his successor and great general, compelled Elulaeus,
King of Tyre, to come to honourable terms with him. In 701
Sennacherib conquered the revolting cities of Syria and
Phoe;nicia. Elulaeus fled to Cyprus and Tubaal was made king.
In 680 Abd-Melkarth, his successor, rebelled against the
Assyrian domination, but fled before Esarhaddon, the son of
Sennacherib. Sidon was practically destroyed, most of its
inhabitants carried off to Assyria, and their places filled by
captives from Babylonia and Elam. During the reign of
Asshurbanipal (668-625 b.c.) Tyre was once more attacked and
conquered, but, as usual, honourably treated. In 606 the
Assyrian empire itself was demolished by the allied Babylonians
and Medes, and in 605 Nabuchadonosor, son and successor of
Nabopolassar, after having conquered Elam and the adjacent
countries, subdued (586 b.c.) Syria, Palestine, Phoe;nicia, and
Egypt. As the Tyrians had command of the sea, it was thirteen
years before their city surrendered, but the long siege crippled
its commerce, and Sidon regained its ancient position as the
leading city. Phoe;nicia was passing through its final stage of
national independence and glory. From the fifth century on, it
was continually harassed by the incursions of various Greek
colonies who gradually absorbed its commerce and industry. It
passed repeatedly under the rule of the Medo-Persian kings,
Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and finally Xerxes, who attacked the
Athenians at Salamis with the aid of the Phoe;nician navy, but
their fleet was defeated and destroyed. In 332, it was finally
and completely conquered by Alexander the Great, after whose
death and subsequent to the partition of his great Macedonian
empire amongst his four generals, it fell to Laodemon. In 214,
Ptolemy attacked Laodemon and annexed Phoe;nicia to Egypt. In
198 b.c., it was absorbed by the Seleucid dynasty of Syria,
after the downfall of which (65 a.d.), it became a Roman
province and remained such till the Mohammedan conquest of Syria
in the seventh century. Phoe;nicia now forms one of the most
important Turkish vilayets of Syria with Beyrout as its
principal city.
The whole political history and constitution of Phoe;nicia may
be summarized as follows: The Phoe;nicians never built an
empire, but each city had its little independent territory,
assemblies, kings, and government, and for general state
business sent delegates to Tyre. They were not a military, but
essentially a seafaring and commercial people, and were
successively conquered by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Persians, Greeks, and Romans, to whom, because of their great
wealth, they fulfilled all their obligations by the payment of
tribute. Although blessed with fertile land and well provided by
nature, the Phoe;nicians, owing to their small territory and
comparatively large population, were compelled, from the very
remotest antiquity, to gain their livelihood through commerce.
Hence, their numerous caravan routes to the East, and their
wonderful marine commerce with the West. They were the only
nation of the ancient East who had a navy. By land they pushed
their trade to Arabia for gold, agate, onyx, incense, and myrrh;
to India for pearls, spices, ivory, ebony, and ostrich plumes;
to Mesopotamia for cotton and linen clothes; to Palestine and
Egypt for grain, wheat, and barley; to the regions of the Black
Sea for horses, slaves, and copper. By sea they encircled all
the Mediterranean coast, along Syria, North Africa, Asia Minor,
the AEgean Sea, and even Spain, France, and England. A logical
result of this remarkable commercial activity was the founding
in Cyprus, Egypt, Crete, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, Spain,
Asia Minor, and Greece of numerous colonies, which became
important centres of Phoe;nician commerce and civilization, and
in due time left their deep mark upon the history and
civilization of the classical nations of the Mediterranean
world.
Owing to this activity also, the Phoe;nician developed neither
literature nor acts. The work done by them for Solomon shows
that their architectural and mechanical skill was great only in
superiority to that of the Hebrews. The remains of their
architecture are heavy and their aesthetic art is primitive in
character. In literature, they left nothing worthy of
preservation. To them is ascribed the simplification of the
primitive, pictorial or ideographic, and syllabic systems of
writing into an alphabetic one consisting of twenty-two letters
and written from right to left, from which are derived all the
later and modern Semitic and European alphabets. This tradition,
however, must be accepted with some modification. There is also
no agreement as to whether the basis of this Phoe;nician
alphabet is of Egyptian (hieroglyphic and hieratic) or of
Assyro-Babylonian (cuneiform) origin. Those who derive it from a
Cypriot prototype have not as yet sufficiently demonstrated the
plausibility and probability of their opinion. The recent
discovery of numerous Minoan inscriptions in the Island of
Crete, some of them dating as early as 2000 b.c., has
considerably complicated the problem. Other inventions, or
improvements, in science and mechanics, such as weights and
measures, glass manufacture, coinage, the finding of the polar
star, and navigation are perhaps justly attributed to the
Phoe;nicians. Both ethnographically and linguistically, they
belong to the so-called Semitic group. They were called
Canaanites, and spoke a dialectical variety of the Canaanite
group of Western Semitic tongues, closely akin to the dialects
of the Semitic inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, and Canaan. A
few specimens of their language, as it was spoken by the
colonies in North Africa towards the end of the third century
b.c., may still be read in Plautus, from which it appears to
have already attained a great degree of consonantal and vocal
decay. The dialect of the inscriptions is more archaic and less
corrupt.
Our information concerning the religion of the Phoe;nicians is
meagre and mainly found in the Old Testament, in classical
traditions, and legends. Of special interest, however, are the
votive inscriptions in which a great number of proper names
generally construed with that of some divinity are found.
Phoe;nician polytheism, like that of the other Semitic nations,
was based partly on Animism and partly on the worship of the
great powers of nature, mostly of astral origin. They deified
the sun and the moon, which they considered the great forces
that create and destroy, and called them Baal and Astaroth. Each
city had its divine pair: at Sidon it was Baal Sidon (the sun)
and Astarte (the moon); at Gebel, Baal Tummuz and Baaleth; at
Carthage, Baal Hamon and Tanith. But the same god changed his
name according as he was conceived as creator or destroyer; thus
Baal as destroyer was worshipped at Carthage under the name of
Moloch. These gods, represented by idols, had their temples,
altars, and priests. As creators they were honoured with orgies
and tumultuous feasts; as destroyers by human victims. Astoreth
(Venus), whom the Sidonians represented by the crescent of the
moon and the dove, had her cult in the sacred woods. Baal Moloch
was figured at Carthage as a bronze colossus with arms extended
and lowered. To appease him children were laid in his arms, and
fell at once into a pit of fire. When Agathocles besieged the
city the principal Carthaginians sacrificed to Moloch as many as
two hundred of their children. Although this sensual and
sanguinary religion inspired the surrounding nations with
horror, they, nevertheless, imitated it. Hence, the Hebrews
frequently sacrificed to Baal on the mountains, and the Greeks
adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of Aphrodite, and Baal
Melkart of Tyre under the name of Herakles. The principal
Phoe;nician divinities are Adonis, El, Eshmon, Baal, Gad,
Moloch, Melkarth, Sakan, Anath, Astaroth, Rasaph, Sad, and many
others. (For the history of Christianity in Phoe;nicia and its
present condition see Syria.)
Movers, Die Phoenizier (Bonn-Berlin, 1841-56); Lenormant-
Babelon, Hist. ancienne de l'Orient (6 vols., Paris, 1881-88),
see especially vol. VI; Kenrick, Phoe;nicia (London, 1855);
Rawlinson, Hist. of Phoe;nicia (London, 1889); Meyer, Gesch. d.
Altertums (Stuttgart, 1884- 1902); Pietschmann, Gesch. d.
Phoenizier (Berlin, 1889); Renan, La Mission de Phenicie (Paris,
1874); Perrot and Chipiez, Hist. of Art in Phoe;nicia (London,
1885); Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgesch., I, II
(Leipzig, 1876-78); Baethgen, Beitrage zur Semitisches
Religionsgesch., 16-65; SchrOeder, D. Phoeniz. Sprache (Halle,
1869); Williams, The Hist. of the Art of Writing (London-New
York, 1902); Landau, Die Phoenizier in Der Alte Orient (Leipzig,
1903); Eiselen, Sidon, a Study in Oriental Hist. (New York,
1907).
Gabriel Oussani
Photinus
Photinus
A heretic of the fourth century, a Galatian and deacon to
Marcellus, Metropolitan of Ancyra; d. 376. He became the Bishop
of Sirmium in Pannonia, an important position on account of the
frequent residence of the Emperor Constantius there. The city
was more Latin than Greek, and Photinus knew both languages.
Marcellus was deposed by the Arian party, but was restored by
Pope Julius and the Synod of Sardica (343), and was believed by
them to be orthodox. But Photinus was obviously heretical, and
the Eusebian court-party condemned them both at the Synod of
Antioch (344), which drew up the "macrostich" creed. Three
envoys were sent to the West and in a synod at Milan (345)
Photinus was condemned, but not Marcellus; communion was refused
to the envoys because they refused to anathematize Arius. It is
evident from the way in which Pope Liberius mentions this synod
that Roman legates were present, and St. Hilary calls its
sentence a condemnation by the Romans. Two years later another
synod, perhaps also at Milan, tried to obtain the deposition of
Photinus but this was impossible owing to an outbreak of the
populace in his favour. Another synod was held against him at
Sirmium; some Arianizing propositions from it are quoted by St.
Hilary. The heretic appealed to the emperor, who appointed
judges before whom he should be heard. For this purpose a great
synod assembled at Sirmium (351). Basil, the supplanter of
Marcellus as Bishop of Ancyra and the future leader of the
Semi-Arians, disputed with Photinus. The heretic was deposed,
and twenty-seven anathematisms were agreed to. Photinus probably
returned to his see at the accession of Julian, like the other
exiled bishops, for St. Jerome says he was banished by
Valentinian (364-75). Eventually he settled in Galatia.
Epiphanius, writing at about the date of his death, considered
his heresy dead in the West. In Pannonia there were still some
Photinians in 381, and a Photinian named Marcus, driven from
Rome under Innocent I, found adherents in Croatia. In later
writers, e. g., St. Augustine, Photinian is the name for any who
held Christ to be a mere man.
We obtain some knowledge of the heresies of Photinus from the
twenty-seven anathematisms of the council of 351, of which all
but 1, 10, 12, 13, 18, 23, 24, 25 (according to St. Hilary's
order: 1, 10, 11, 12, 17, 22, 24, 25) and possibly 2 are
directed against him. We have corroborative evidence from many
writers, especially St. Epiphanius, who had before him the
complete minutes of the disputation with Basil of Ancyra. The
canons obviously misrepresent Photinus's doctrine in condemning
it, in so far as they sometimes say "Son" where Photinus would
have said "Word". He makes the Father and the Word one Person
(prosopon). The Word is equally with the Father unbegotten, or
is called a part of the Father, eternally in Him as our logos is
in us. The latent Word (endiathetos) becomes the explicit Word
(prophorikos) not, apparently, at the creation, but at the
Incarnation, for only then is He really Son. The Divine
Substance can be dilated and contracted (so St. Hilary
translates platynesthai and systellesthai, while Mercator's
version of Nestorius's fourth sermon gives "extended and
collected"). This is exactly the wording of Sabellius, who said
that God platynetai, is broadened out, into Son and Spirit. To
Photinus the expansion forms the Son, who is not, until the
human birth of Christ. Hence before the Incarnation there is no
Son, and God is Father and Word, Logopator. The Incarnation
seems to have been conceived after a Nestorian fashion, for
Photinus declared the Son of Mary to be mere man, and this is
the best-known point in his teaching. He was consequently
classed with Paul of Samosata; Jerome even calls him an
Ebionite, probably because, like Mercator, he believed him to
have denied the Virgin birth. But this is perhaps an error. He
certainly said that the Holy Ghost descended upon Christ and
that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost. By His union with the
prophoric Word, Christ was the Son. The Holy Ghost is identified
like the Word with the Unbegotten; He is a part of the Father
and the Word, as the Word is a part of the Father. It is evident
that Photinus went so far beyond Marcellus that it is unfair to
call him his follower. In his Trinitarian doctrine he is a
Modalist Monarchian, and in his Christology a Dynamistic
Monarchian, combining the errors of Theodotus with those of
Sabellius. But it is clear that his views were partly motived by
the desire to get away from the Ditheism which not only the
Arians but even the Eastern moderates were unable to avoid, and
he especially denounced the Arian doctrine that the Son is
produced by the Will of the Father. His writings are lost; the
chief of them were "Contra Gentes" and "Libri ad Valentinianum",
according to St. Jerome; he wrote a work in both Greek and Latin
against all the heresies, and an explanation of the Creed.
See ARIANISM; also HEFELE, Councils, II; WALCH, Historie der
Ketzereien, III (Leipzig, 1766); KLOSE, Gesch. und Lehre des
Marcellus und Photinus (Hamburg, 1837); ZAHN, Marcellus von
Ancyra (Gotha, 1867); FFOULKES in Dict. Christ. Biog. (1887).
JOHN CHAPMAN
Photius of Constantinople
Photius of Constantinople
Photius of Constantinople, chief author of the great schism
between East and West, was b. at Constantinople c. 815
(Hergenroether says "not much earlier than 827", "Photius", I,
316; others, about 810); d. probably 6 Feb., 897. His father was
a spatharios (lifeguard) named Sergius. Symeon Magister ("De
Mich. et Theod.", Bonn ed., 1838, xxix, 668) says that his
mother was an escaped nun and that he was illegitimate. He
further relates that a holy bishop, Michael of Synnada, before
his birth foretold that he would become patriarch, but would
work so much evil that it would be better that he should not be
born. His father then wanted to kill him and his mother, but the
bishop said: "You cannot hinder what god has ordained. Take care
for yourself." His mother also dreamed that she would give birth
to a demon. When he was born the abbot of the Maximine monastery
baptized him and gave him the name Photius (Enlightened),
saying: "Perhaps the anger of God will be turned from him"
(Symeon Magister, ibid., cf. Hergenroether, "Photius", I,
318-19). These stories need not be taken seriously. It is
certain that the future patriarch belonged to one of the great
families of Constantinople; the Patriarch Tarasius (784-806), in
whose time the seventh general council (Second of Nicaea, 787)
was held, was either elder brother or uncle of his father
(Photius: Ep. ii, P. G., CII, 609). The family was conspicuously
orthodox and had suffered some persecution in Iconoclast times
(under Leo V, 813-20). Photius says that in his youth he had had
a passing inclination for the monastic life ("Ep. ad Orient. et
Oecon.", P. G., CII, 1020), but the prospect of a career in the
world soon eclipsed it.
He early laid the foundations of that erudition which eventually
made him one of the most famous scholars of all the Middle Ages.
His natural aptitude must have been extraordinary, his industry
was colossal. Photius does not appear to have had any teachers
worthy of being remembered; at any rate he never alludes to his
masters. Hergenroether, however, notes that there were many good
scholars at Constantinople while Photius was a child and young
man, and argues from his exact and systematic knowledge of all
branches of learning that he could not have been entirely
self-taught (op. cit., I, 322). His enemies appreciated his
learning. Nicetas, the friend and biographer of his rival
Ignatius, praises Photius's skill in grammar, poetry, rhetoric,
philosophy, medicine, law, "and all science" ("Vita S. Ignatii"
in Mansi, XVI, 229). Pope Nicholas I, in the heat of the quarrel
writes to the Emperor Michael III: "Consider very carefully how
Photius can stand, in spite of his great virtues and universal
knowledge" (Ep. xcviii "Ad Mich.", P. G., CXIX, 1030). It is
curious that so learned a man never knew Latin. While he was
still a young man he made the first draft of his encyclopaedic
"Myrobiblion". At an early age, also, he began to teach grammar,
philosophy, and theology in his own house to a steadily
increasing number of students.
His public career was to be that of a statesman, coupled with a
military command. His brother Sergius married Irene, the
emperor's aunt. This connexion and his undoubted merit procured
Photius speedy advancement. He became chief secretary of State
(protosekretis) and captain of the Life Guard (protospatharios).
He was unmarried. Probably about 838 he was sent on an embassy
"to the Assyrians" ("Myrobiblion", preface), i. e., apparently,
to the Khalifa at Bagdad. In the year 857, then, when the crisis
came in his life, Photius was already one of the most prominent
members of the Court of Constantinople. That crisis is the story
of the Great Schism (see GREEK CHURCH). The emperor was Michael
III (842-67), son of the Theodora who had finally restored the
holy images. When he succeeded his father Theophilus (829-842)
he was only three years old; he grew to be the wretched boy
known in Byzantine history as Michael the Drunkard (ho
methystes). Theodora, at first regent, retired in 856, and her
brother Bardas succeeded, with the title of Caesar. Bardas lived
in incest with his daughter-in-law Eudocia, wherefore the
Patriarch Ignatius (846-57) refused him Holy Communion on the
Epiphany of 857. Ignatius was deposed and banished (Nov. 23,
857), and the more pliant Photius was intruded into his place.
He was hurried through Holy Orders in six days; on Christmas
Day, 857, Gregory Asbestas of Syracuse, himself excommunicate
for insubordination by Ignatius, ordained Photius patriarch. By
this act Photius committed three offences against canon law: he
was ordained bishop without having kept the interstices, by an
excommunicate consecrator, and to an already occupied see. To
receive ordination from an excommunicate person made him too
excommunicate ipso facto.
After vain attempts to make Ignatius resign his see, the emperor
tried to obtain from Pope Nicholas I (858-67) recognition of
Photius by a letter grossly misrepresenting the facts and asking
for legates to come and decide the question in a synod. Photius
also wrote, very respectfully, to the same purpose
(Hergenroether, "Photius", I, 407-11). The pope sent two
legates, Rodoald of Porto and Zachary of Anagni, with cautious
letters. The legates were to hear both sides and report to him.
A synod was held in St. Sophia's (May, 861). The legates took
heavy bribes and agreed to Ignatius's deposition and Photius's
succession. They returned to Rome with further letters, and the
emperor sent his Secretary of State, Leo, after them with more
explanations (Hergenroether, op. cit., I, 439-460). In all these
letters both the emperor and Photius emphatically acknowledge
the Roman primacy and categorically invoke the pope's
jurisdiction to confirm what has happened. Meanwhile Ignatius,
in exile at the island Terebinth, sent his friend the
Archimandrite Theognostus to Rome with an urgent letter setting
forth his case (Hergenroether, I, 460-461). Theognostus did not
arrive till 862. Nicholas, then, having heard both sides,
decided for Ignatius, and answered the letters of Michael and
Photius by insisting that Ignatius must be restored, that the
usurpation of his see must cease (ibid, I, 511-16, 516-19). He
also wrote in the same sense to the other Eastern patriarchs
(510-11). From that attitude Rome never wavered: it was the
immediate cause of the schism. In 863 the pope held a synod at
the Lateran in which the two legates were tried, degraded, and
excommunicated. The synod repeats Nicholas's decision, that
Ignatius is lawful Patriarch of Constantinople; Photius is to be
excommunicate unless he retires at once from his usurped place.
But Photius had the emperor and the Court on his side. Instead
of obeying the pope, to whom he had appealed, he resolved to
deny his authority altogether. Ignatius was kept chained in
prison, the pope's letters were not allowed to be published. The
emperor sent an answer dictated by Photius saying that nothing
Nicholas could do would help Ignatius, that all the Eastern
Patriarchs were on Photius's side, that the excommunication of
the legates must be explained and that unless the pope altered
his decision, Michael would come to Rome with an army to punish
him. Photius then kept his place undisturbed for four years. In
867 he carried the war into the enemy's camp by excommunicating
the pope and his Latins. The reasons he gives for this, in an
encyclical sent to the Eastern patriarchs, are: that Latins
1. fast on Saturday
2. do not begin Lent till Ash Wednesday (instead of three days
earlier, as in the East)
3. do not allow priests to be married
4. do not allow priests to administer confirmation
5. have added the filioque to the creed.
Because of these errors the pope and all Latins are:
"forerunners of apostasy, servants of Antichrist who deserve a
thousand deaths, liars, fighters against God" (Hergenroether, I,
642-46). It is not easy to say what the Melchite patriarchs
thought of the quarrel at this juncture. Afterwards, at the
Eighth General Council, their legates declared that they had
pronounced no sentence against Photius because that of the pope
was obviously sufficient.
Then, suddenly, in the same year (Sept. 867), Photius fell.
Michael III was murdered and Basil I (the Macedonian, 867-86)
seized his place as emperor. Photius shared the fate of all
Michael's friends. He was ejected from the patriarch's palace,
and Ignatius restored. Nicholas I died (Nov. 13, 867). Adrian II
(867-72), his successor, answered Ignatius's appeal for legates
to attend a synod that should examine the whole matter by
sending Donatus, Bishop of Ostia, Stephen, Bishop of Nepi, and a
deacon, Marinus. They arrived at Constantinople in Sept., 869,
and in October the synod was opened which Catholics recognize as
the Eighth General Council (Fourth of Constantinople). This
synod tried Photius, confirmed his deposition, and, as he
refused to renounce his claim, excommunicated him. The bishops
of his party received light penances (Mansi, XVI, 308-409).
Photius was banished to a monastery at Stenos on the Bosphorus.
Here he spent seven years, writing letters to his friends,
organizing his party, and waiting for another chance. Meanwhile
Ignatius reigned as patriarch. Photius, as part of his policy,
professed great admiration for the emperor and sent him a
fictitious pedigree showing his descent form St. Gregory the
Illuminator and a forged prophecy foretelling his greatness
(Mansi, XVI, 284). Basil was so pleased with this that he
recalled him in 876 and appointed him tutor to his son
Constantine. Photius ingratiated himself with everyone and
feigned reconciliation with Ignatius. It is doubtful how far
Ignatius believed in him, but Photius at this time never tires
of expatiating on his close friendship with the patriarch. He
became so popular that when Ignatius died (23 Oct, 877) a strong
party demanded that Photius should succeed him; the emperor was
now on their side, and an embassy went to Rome to explain that
everyone at Constantinople wanted Photius to be patriarch. The
pope (John VIII, 872-82) agreed, absolved him from all censure,
and acknowledged him as patriarch.
This concession has been much discussed. It has been
represented, truly enough, that Photius had shown himself unfit
for such a post; John VIII's acknowledgment of him has been
described as showing deplorable weakness. On the other hand, by
Ignatius's death the See of Constantinople was now really
vacant; the clergy had an undoubted right to elect their own
patriarch; to refuse to acknowledge Photius would have provoked
a fresh breach with the East, would not have prevented his
occupation of the see, and would have given his party (including
the emperor) just reason for a quarrel. The event proved that
almost anything would have been better than to allow his
succession, if it could be prevented. But the pope could not
foresee that, and no doubt hoped that Photius, having reached
the height of his ambition, would drop the quarrel.
In 878, then, Photius at last obtained lawfully the place he had
formerly usurped. Rome acknowledged him and restored him to her
communion. There was no possible reason now for a fresh quarrel.
But he had identified himself so completely with that strong
anti-Roman party in the East which he mainly had formed, and,
doubtless, he had formed so great a hatred of Rome, that now he
carried on the old quarrel with as much bitterness as ever and
more influence. Nevertheless he applied to Rome for legates to
come to another synod. There was no reason for the synod, but he
persuaded John VIII that it would clear up the last remains of
the schism and rivet more firmly the union between East and
West. His real motive was, no doubt, to undo the effect of the
synod that had deposed him. The pope sent three legates,
Cardinal Peter of St. Chrysogonus, Paul, Bishop of Ancona, and
Eugene, Bishop of Ostia. The synod was opened in St. Sophia's in
November, 879. This is the "Psuedosynodus Photiana" which the
Orthodox count as the Eighth General Council. Photius had it all
his own way throughout. He revoked the acts of the former synod
(869), repeated all his accusations against the Latins, dwelling
especially on the filioque grievance, anathematized all who
added anything to the Creed, and declared that Bulgaria should
belong to the Byzantine Patriarchate. The fact that there was a
great majority for all these measures shows how strong Photius's
party had become in the East. The legates, like their
predecessors in 861, agreed to everything the majority desired
(Mansi, XVII, 374 sq.). As soon as they had returned to Rome,
Photius sent the Acts to the pope for his confirmation. Instead
John, naturally, again excommunicated him. So the schism broke
out again. This time it lasted seven years, till Basil I's death
in 886.
Basil was succeeded by his son Leo VI (886-912), who strongly
disliked Photius. One of his first acts was to accuse him of
treason, depose, and banish him (886). The story of this second
deposition and banishment is obscure. The charge was that
Photius had conspired to depose the emperor and put one of his
own relations on the throne---an accusation which probably meant
that the emperor wanted to get rid of him. As Stephen, Leo's
younger brother, was made patriarch (886-93) the real
explanation may be merely that Leo disliked Photius and wanted a
place for his brother. Stephen's intrusion was as glaring an
offence against canon law as had been that of Photius in 857; so
Rome refused to recognize him. It was only under his successor
Antony II (893-95) that a synod was held which restored reunion
for a century and a half, till the time of Michael Caerularius
(1043-58). But Photius had left a powerful anti-Roman party,
eager to repudiate the pope's primacy and ready for another
schism. It was this party, to which Caerularius belonged, that
triumphed at Constantinople under him, so that Photius is
rightly considered the author of the schism which still lasts.
After this second deposition Photius suddenly disappears from
history. It is not even known in what monastery he spent his
last years. Among his many letters there is none that can be
dated certainly as belonging to this second exile. The date of
his death, not quite certain, is generally given as 6 February,
897.
That Photius was one of the greatest men of the Middle Ages, one
of the most remarkable characters in all church history, will
not be disputed. His fatal quarrel with Rome, though the most
famous, was only one result of his many-sided activity. During
the stormy years he spent on the patriarch's throne, while he
was warring against the Latins, he was negotiating with the
Moslem Khalifa for the protection of the Christians under Moslem
rule and the care of the Holy Places, and carrying on
controversies against various Eastern heretics, Armenians,
Paulicians etc. His interest in letters never abated. Amid all
his cares he found time to write works on dogma, Biblical
criticism, canon law, homilies, an encyclopaedia of all kinds of
learning, and letters on all questions of the day. Had it not
been for his disastrous schism, he might be counted the last,
and one of the greatest, of the Greek Fathers. There is no
shadow of suspicion against his private life. He bore his exiles
and other troubles manfully and well. He never despaired of his
cause and spent the years of adversity in building up his party,
writing letters to encourage his old friends and make new ones.
And yet the other side of his character is no less evident. His
insatiable ambition, his determination to obtain and keep the
patriarchal see, led him to the extreme of dishonesty. His claim
was worthless. That Ignatius was the rightful patriarch as long
as he lived, and Photius an intruder, cannot be denied by any
one who does not conceive the Church as merely the slave of a
civil government. And to keep this place Photius descended to
the lowest depth of deceit. At the very time he was protesting
his obedience to the pope he was dictating to the emperor
insolent letters that denied all papal jurisdiction. He
misrepresented the story of Ignatius's deposition with
unblushing lies, and he at least connived at Ignatius's
ill-treatment in banishment. He proclaimed openly his entire
subservience to the State in the whole question of his
intrusion. He stops at nothing in his war against the Latins. He
heaps up accusations against them that he must have known were
lies. His effrontery on occasions is almost incredible. For
instance, as one more grievance against Rome, he never tires of
inveighing against the fact that Pope Marinus I (882-84), John
VIII's successor, was translated from another see, instead of
being ordained from the Roman clergy. He describes this as an
atrocious breach of canon law, quoting against it the first and
second canons of Sardica; and at the same time he himself
continually transferred bishops in his patriarchate. The
Orthodox, who look upon him, rightly, as the great champion of
their cause against Rome, have forgiven all his offences for the
sake of this championship. They have canonized him, and on 6
Feb., when they keep his feast, their office overflows with his
praise. He is the "far-shining radiant star of the church", the
"most inspired guide of the Orthodox", "thrice blessed speaker
for God", "wise and divine glory of the hierarchy, who broke the
horns of Roman pride" ("Menologion" for 6 Feb., ed. Maltzew, I,
916 sq.). The Catholic remembers this extraordinary man with
mixed feelings. We do not deny his eminent qualities and yet we
certainly do not remember him as a thrice blessed speaker for
God. One may perhaps sum up Photius by saying that he was a
great man with one blot on his character---his insatiable and
unscrupulous ambition. But that blot so covers his life that it
eclipses everything else and makes him deserve our final
judgment as one of the worst enemies the Church of Christ ever
had, and the cause of the greatest calamity that ever befell
her.
WORKS
Of Photius's prolific literary production part has been lost. A
great merit of what remains is that he has preserved at least
fragments of earlier Greek works of which otherwise we should
know nothing. This applies especially to his "Myriobiblion".
1. The "Myriobiblion" or "Bibliotheca" is a collection of
descriptions of books he had read, with notes and sometimes
copious extracts. It contains 280 such notices of books (or
rather 279; no. 89 is lost) on every possible
subject---theology, philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, physics,
medicine. He quotes pagans and Christians, Acts of Councils,
Acts of Martyrs, and so on, in no sort of order. For the works
thus partially saved (otherwise unknown) see Krumbacher, "Byz.
Litter.", 518-19.
2. The "Lexicon" (Lexeon synagoge) was compiled, probably, to a
great extent by his students under his direction (Krumbacher,
ibid., 521), from older Greek dictionaries (Pausanias,
Harpokration, Diogenianos, AElius Dionysius). It was intended
as a practical help to readers of the Greek classics, the
Septuagint, and the New testament. Only one MS. of it exists,
the defective "Codex Galeanus" (formerly in the possession of
Thomas Gale, now at Cambridge), written about 1200.
3. The "Amphilochia", dedicated to one of his favourite
disciples, Amphilochius of Cyzicus, are answers to questions
of Biblical, philosophical, and theological difficulties,
written during his first exile (867-77). There are 324
subjects discussed, each in a regular form--question, answer,
difficulties, solutions---but arranged again in no order.
Photius gives mostly the views of famous Greek Fathers,
Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, John Damascene, especially
Theodoret.
4. Biblical works.---Only fragments of these are extant, chiefly
in Catenas. The longest are from Commentaries on St. Matthew
and Romans.
5. Canon Law.---The classical "Nomocanon" (q. v.), the official
code of the Orthodox Church, is attributed to Photius. It is,
however, older than his time (see JOHN SCHOLASTICUS). It was
revised and received additions (from the synods of 861 and
879) in Photius's time, probably by his orders. The
"Collections and Accurate Expositions" (Eunagolai kai
apodeixeis akribeis) (Hergenroether, op. cit., III, 165-70)
are a series of questions and answers on points of canon law,
really an indirect vindication of his own claims and position.
A number of his letters bear on canonical questions.
6. Homilies.---Hergenroether mentions twenty-two sermons of
Photius (III, 232). Of these two were printed when
Hergenroether wrote (in P. G., CII, 548, sq.), one on the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, and one at the dedication of a
new church during his second patriarchate. Later, S.
Aristarches published eighty-three homilies of different kinds
(Constantinople, 1900).
7. Dogmatic and polemical works.---Many of these bear on his
accusations against the Latins and so form the beginning of
the long series of anti-Catholic controversy produced by
Orthodox theologians. The most important is "Concerning the
Theology about the Holy Ghost" (Peri tes tou hagiou pneumatos
mystagonias, P. G., CII, 264-541), a defence of the Procession
from God the Father alone, based chiefly on John, xv, 26. An
epitome of the same work, made by a later author and contained
in Euthymius Zigabenus's "Panoplia", XIII, became the
favourite weapon of Orthodox controversialists for many
centuries. The treatise "Against Those who say that Rome is
the First See", also a very popular Orthodox weapon, is only
the last part or supplement of the "Collections", often
written out separately. The "Dissertation Concerning the
Reappearance of the Manichaeans" (Diegesis peri tes manichaion
anablasteseos, P. G., CII, 9-264), in four books, is a history
and refutation of the Paulicians. Much of the "Amphilochia"
belongs to this heading. The little work "Against the Franks
and other Latins" (Hergenroether, "Monumenta", 62-71),
attributed to Photius, is not authentic. It was written after
Caerularius (Hergenroether, "Photius", III, 172-224).
8. Letters.---Migne, P. G., CII, publishes 193 letters arranged
in three books; Balettas (London, 1864) has edited a more
complete collection in five parts. They cover all the chief
periods of Photius's life, and are the most important source
for his history.
A. Ehrhard (in Krumbacher, "Byzantinische Litteratur", 74-77)
judges Photius as a distinguished preacher, but not as a
theologian of the first importance. His theological work is
chiefly the collection of excerpts from Greek Fathers and other
sources. His erudition is vast, and probably unequalled in the
Middle Ages, but he has little originality, even in his
controversy against the Latins. Here, too, he only needed to
collect angry things said by Byzantine theologians before his
time. But his discovery of the filioque grievance seems to be
original. Its success as a weapon is considerably greater than
its real value deserves (Fortescue, "Orthodox Eastern Church",
372-84).
Editions.---The works of Photius known at the time were
collected by Migne, P. G., CI-CV. J. Balettas, Photiou epistolai
(London, 1864), contains other letters (altogether 260) not in
Migne. A. Papadopulos-Kerameus, "S. Patris Photii Epistolae XLV"
(St. Petersburg, 1896) gives forty-five more, of which, however,
only the first twenty-one are authentic. S. Aristaches, Photiou
logoi kai homiliai 83 (Constantinople, 1900, 2 vols.), gives
other homilies not in Migne. Oikonomos has edited the
"Amphilochia" (Athens, 1858) in a more complete text. J.
Hergenroether, "Monumenta graeca ad Photium eiusque historiam
pertinentia" (Ratisbon, 1869), and Papadopulos-Kerameus,
"Monumenta graeca et latina ad historiam Photii patriarchae
pertinentia" (St. Petersburg, 2 parts, 1899 and 1901), add
further documents.
The Acts of the Synods of 869 and 879 are the most important
sources (Mansi, XVI and XVII). THEOGNOSTUS (Archimandrite at
Constantinople), Libellos periechon panta ta kata ton megan, a
contemporary account of the beginning of the schism (in Mansi,
XVI, 295, sq.); NIKETAS DAVID PAPHLAGON (d. 890); Bios Ignatiou
(Mansi, XVI, 209 sq.). PAPADOPULOS-KERAMEUS declared this to be
a fourteenth-century forgery in the Vizant. Vremennik (1899),
13-38, Pseudoniketas ho paphlagon; he was successfully refuted
by VASILJEWSKI (ibid., 39-56); cf. Byzant. Zeitschrift, IX,
(1900), 268 sq. GENESIOS, Basileiai (written between 945-959), a
history of the emperors and Court from Leo V (813-20) to Basil I
(867-86), published in Corpus Scriptorum Hist. Byzantinae (Bonn,
1834) and P. G., CIX,15 sqq.; LEO GRAMMATICUS, re-edition of
SYMEON MAGISTER, Chronicle, in Corpus Script., 1842, and P. G.
CVIII, 1037 sqq.
HERGENROeTHER, Photius, Patriarch von Konstantinopel, sein
Leben, seine Schriften u. das griechische Schisma (Ratisbon,
1867-69) (the most learned and exhaustive work on the subject).
DEMETRAKOPULOS, Historia tou schismatos tes latinikes apo tes
orthodoxou ekklesias (Leipzig, 1867), is an attempted rejoinder
to HERGENROeTHER, as is also KREMOS, Historia tou schismatos ton
duo ekklesion (Athens, 1905-07, two volumes published out of
four). LAeMMER, Papst Nikolaus u. die byzantinsche Staatskirche
seiner Zeit (Berlin, 1857); PICHLER, Geschichte der kirchlichen
Trennung zwischen dem Orient. u. Occident (Munich, 1864-65);
NORDEN, Das Papsttum und Byzanz (Berlin, 1903); KRUMBACHER,
Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur (Munich, 1897), 73-79,
515-524 (with copious bibliography); FORTESCUE, The Orthodox
Eastern Church (London, 1907), 135-171; RUINAUT, Le schisme de
Photius (Paris, 1910).
ADRIAN FORTESCUE
Phylacteries
Phylacteries
( Phulachterion -- safeguard, amulet, or charm).
The word occurs only once in the New Testament (Matthew 23:5),
in the great discourse of Our Lord against the Pharisees whom He
reproaches with ostentation in the discharge of their religious
and social duties: "For they make their phylacteries broad and
enlarge their fringes." By the Jews the phylacteries are termed
tephillin, plural of the word tephillah, "a prayer," and consist
of two small square cases of leather, one of which is worn on
the forehead, the other on the upper left arm. The case for the
forehead holds four distinct compartments, that for the arm only
one. They contain narrow strips of parchment on which are copied
passages from the Pentateuch, viz., Exodus 13:1-10; and
Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21. The practice of wearing the
phylacteries at stated moments is still regarded as a sacred
religious duty by the orthodox Jews.
KLEIN, Die Totaphoth nach Bibel und Tradition in Jahrbuecher f.
Prot. Theol. (Berlin, 1881), 666-689; VIGOUROUX, Dict. de la
Bible, s.v. Phylacteres.
JAMES F. DRISCOLL
History of Physics
History of Physics
The subject will be treated under the following heads:
I. A Glance at Ancient Physics;
II. Science and Early Christian Scholars;
III. A Glance at Arabian Physics;
IV. Arabian Tradition and Latin Scholasticism;
V. The Science of Observation and Its Progress
+ Astronomers
+ The Statics of Jordanus
+ Thierry of Freiberg
+ Pierre of Maricourt;
VI. The Articles of Paris (1277)
+ Possibility of Vacuum;
VII. The Earth's Motion
+ Oresme;
VIII. Plurality of Worlds;
IX. Dynamics
+ Theory of Impetus
+ Inertia
+ Celestial and Sublunary Mechanics Identical;
X. Propagation of the Doctrines of the School of Paris in
Germany and Italy
+ Purbach and Regiomontanus
+ Nicholas of Cusa
+ Vinci;
XI. Italian Averroism and its Tendencies to Routine
+ Attempts at Restoring the Astronomy of Homocentric Spheres;
XII. The Copernican Revolution;
XIII. Fortunes of the Copernican System in the Sixteenth
Century;
XIV. Theory of the Tides;
XV. Statics in the Sixteenth Century
+ Stevinus;
XVI. Dynamics in the Sixteenth Century;
XVII. Galileo's Work;
XVIII. Initial Attempts in Celestial Mechanics
+ Gilbert
+ Kepler;
XIX. Controversies concerning Geostatics;
XX. Descartes's Work;
XXI. Progress of Experimental Physics;
XXII. Undulatory Theory of Light;
XXIII. Development of Dynamics;
XXIV. Newton's Work;
XXV. Progress of General and Celestial Mechanics in the
Eighteenth Century;
XXVI. Establishment of the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism;
XXVII. Molecular Attraction;
XXVIII. Revival of the Undulatory Theory of Light;
XXIX. Theories of Heat.
I. A GLANCE AT ANCIENT PHYSICS
Although at the time of Christ's birth Hellenic science had
produced nearly all its masterpieces, it was still to give to
the world Ptolemy's astronomy, the way for which had been paved
for more than a century by the works of Hipparchus. The
revelations of Greek thought on the nature of the exterior world
ended with the "Almagest", which appeared about a.d. 145, and
then began the decline of ancient learning. Those of its works
that escaped the fires kindled by Mohammedan warriors were
subjected to the barren interpretations of Mussulman
commentators and like parched seed, awaited the time when Latin
Christianity would furnish a favourable soil in which they could
once more flourish and bring forth fruit. Hence it is that the
time when Ptolemy put the finishing touches to his "Great
Mathematical Syntax of Astronomy" seems the most opportune in
which to study the field of ancient physics. An impassable
frontier separated this field into two regions in which
different laws prevailed. From the moon's orbit to the sphere
enclosing the world, extended the region of beings exempt from
generation, change, and death, of perfect, divine beings, and
these were the star-sphere and the stars themselves. Inside the
lunar orbit lay the region of generation and corruption, where
the four elements and the mixed bodies generated by their mutual
combinations were subject to perpetual change.
The science of the stars was dominated by a principle formulated
by Plato and the Pythagoreans, according to which all the
phenomena presented to us by the heavenly bodies must be
accounted for by combinations of circular and uniform motions.
Moreover, Plato declared that these circular motions were
reducible to the rotation of solid globes all limited by
spherical surfaces concentric with the World and the Earth, and
some of these homocentric spheres carried fixed or wandering
stars. Eudoxus of Cnidus, Calippus, and Aristotle vied with one
another in striving to advance this theory of homocentric
spheres, its fundamental hypothesis being incorporated in
Aristotle's "Physics" and "Metaphysics". However, the astronomy
of homocentric spheres could not explain all celestial
phenomena, a considerable number of which showed that the
wandering stars did not always remain at an equal distance from
the Earth. Heraclides Ponticus in Plato's time, and Aristarchus
of Samos about 280 b.c. endeavoured to account for all
astronomical phenomena by a heliocentric system, which was an
outline of the Copernican mechanics; but the arguments of
physics and the precepts of theology proclaiming the Earth's
immobility, readily obtained the ascendency over this doctrine
which existed in a mere outline. Then the labours of Apollonius
Pergaeus (at Alexandria, 205 b.c.), of Hipparchus (who made
observation at Rhodes in 128 and 127 b.c.), and finally of
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus of Pelusium) constituted a new
astronomical system that claimed the Earth to be immovable in
the centre of the universe; a system that seemed, as it were, to
reach its completion when, between a.d. 142 and 146, Ptolemy
wrote a work called Megale mathematike syntaxis tes astronomias,
its Arabian title being transliterated by the Christians of the
Middle Ages, who named it "Almagest". The astronomy of the
"Almagest" explained all astronomical phenomena with a precision
which for a long time seemed satisfactory, accounting for them
by combinations of circular motions; but, of the circles
described, some were eccentric to the World, whilst others were
epicyclic circles, the centres of which described deferent
circles concentric with or eccentric to the World; moreover, the
motion on the deferent was no longer uniform, seeming so only
when viewed from the centre of the equant. Briefly, in order to
construct a kinematical arrangement by means of which phenomena
could be accurately represented, the astronomers whose work
Ptolemy completed had to set at naught the properties ascribed
to the celestial substance by Aristotle's "Physics", and between
this "Physics" and the astronomy of eccentrics and epicycles
there ensued a violent struggle which lasted until the middle of
the sixteenth century.
In Ptolemy's time the physics of celestial motion was far more
advanced than the physics of sublunary bodies, as, in this
science of beings subject to generation and corruption, only two
chapters had reached any degree of perfection, namely, those on
optics (called perspective) and statics. The law of reflection
was known as early as the time of Euclid, about 320 b.c., and to
this geometrician was attributed, although probably erroneously,
a "Treatise on Mirrors", in which the principles of catoptrics
were correctly set forth. Dioptrics, being more difficult, was
developed less rapidly. Ptolemy already knew that the angle of
refraction is not proportional to the angle of incidence, and in
order to determine the ratio between the two he undertook
experiments the results of which were remarkably exact.
Statics reached a fuller development than optics. The
"Mechanical Questions" ascribed to Aristotle were a first
attempt to organize that science, and they contained a kind of
outline of the principle of virtual velocities, destined to
justify the law of the equilibrium of the lever; besides, they
embod. the happy idea of referring to the lever theory the
theory of all simple machines. An elaboration, in which Euclid
seems to have had some part, brought statics to the stage of
development in which it was found by Archimedes (about 287-212
b.c.), who was to raise it to a still higher degree of
perfection. It will here suffice to mention the works of genius
in which the great Syracusan treated the equilibrium of the
weights suspended from the two arms of a lever, the search for
the centre of gravity, and the equilibrium of liquids and
floating bodies. The treatises of Archimedes were too scholarly
to be widely read by the mechanicians who succeeded this
geometrician; these men preferred easier and more practical
writings as, for instance, those on the lines of Aristotle's
"Mechanical Questions". Various treatises by Heron of Alexandria
have preserved for us the type of these decadent works.
II. SCIENCE AND EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS
Shortly after the death of Ptolemy, Christian science took root
at Alexandria with Origen (about 180-253), and a fragment of his
"Commentaries on Genesis", preserved by Eusebius, shows us that
the author was familiar with the latest astronomical
discoveries, especially the precession of the equinoxes.
However, the writings in which the Fathers of the Church comment
upon the work of the six days of Creation, notably the
commentaries of St. Basil and St. Ambrose, borrow but little
from Hellenic physics; in fact, their tone would seem to
indicate distrust in the teachings of Greek science, this
distrust being engendered by two prejudices: in the first place,
astronomy was becoming more and more the slave of astrology, the
superstitions of which the Church diligently combatted; in the
second place, between the essential propositions of peripatetic
physics and what we believe to be the teaching of Holy Writ,
contradictions appeared; thus Genesis was thought to teach the
presence of water above the heaven of the fixed stars (the
firmament) and this was incompatible with the Aristotelean
theory concerning the natural place of the elements. The debates
raised by this question gave St. Augustine an opportunity to lay
down wise exegetical rules, and he recommended Christians not to
put forth lightly, as articles of faith, propositions
contradicted by physical science based upon careful experiments.
St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), a bishop, considered it
legitimate for Christians to desire to know the teachings of
profane science, and he laboured to satisfy this curiosity. His
"Etymologies" and "De natura rerum" are merely compilations of
fragments borrowed from all the pagan and Christian authors with
whom he was acquainted. In the height of the Latin Middle Ages
these works served as models for numerous encyclopaedias, of
which the "De natura rerum" by Bede (about 672-735) and the "De
universo" by Rabanus Maurus (776-856) were the best known.
However, the sources from which the Christians of the West
imbibed a knowledge of ancient physics became daily more
numerous, and to Pliny the Elder's "Natural History", read by
Bede, were added Chalcidius's commentary on Plato's "Timaeus"
and Martianus Capella's "De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii",
these different works inspiring the physics of John Scotus
Eriugena. Prior to a.d. 1000 a new Platonic work by Macrobius, a
commentary on the "Somnium Scipionis", was in great favour in
the schools. Influenced by the various treatises already
mentioned, Guillaume of Conches (1080-1150 or 1154) and the
unknown author of "De mundi constitutione liber", which, by the
way, has been falsely attributed to Bede, set forth a planetary
theory making Venus and Mercury satellites of the sun, but
Eriugena went still further and made the sun also the centre of
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Had he but extended this
hypothesis to Saturn, he would have merited the title of
precursor of Tycho Brahe.
III. A GLANCE AT ARABIAN PHYSICS
The authors of whom we have heretofore spoken had only been
acquainted with Greek science through the medium of Latin
tradition, but the time came when it was to be much more
completely revealed to the Christians of the West through the
medium of Mussulman tradition.
There is no Arabian science. The wise men of Mohammedanism were
always the more or less faithful disciples of the Greeks, but
were themselves destitute of all originality. For instance, they
compiled many abridgments of Ptolemy's "Almagest", made numerous
observations, and constructed a great many astronomical tables,
but added nothing essential to the theories of astronomical
motion; their only innovation in this respect, and, by the way,
quite an unfortunate one, was the doctrine of the oscillatory
motion of the equinoctial points, which the Middle Ages ascribed
to Thabit ibn Kurrah (836-901), but which was probably the idea
of Al-Zarkali, who lived much later and made observations
between 1060 and 1080. This motion was merely the adaptation of
a mechanism conceived by Ptolemy for a totally different
purpose.
In physics, Arabian scholars confined themselves to commentaries
on the statements of Aristotle, their attitude being at times
one of absolute servility. This intellectual servility to
Peripatetic teaching reached its climax in Abul ibn Roshd, whom
Latin scholastics called Averroes (about 1120-98) and who said:
Aristotle "founded and completed logic, physics, and metaphysics
. . . because none of those who have followed him up to our
time, that is to say, for four hundred years, have been able to
add anything to his writings or to detect therein an error of
any importance". This unbounded respect for Aristotle's work
impelled a great many Arabian philosophers to attack Ptolemy's
"Astronomy" in the name of Peripatetic physics. The conflict
between the hypotheses of eccentrics and epicycles was
inaugurated by Ibn Badja, known to the scholastics as Avempace
(d. 1138), and Abu Bekr ibn el-Tofeil, called Abubacer by the
scholastics (d. 1185), and was vigorously conducted by Averroes,
the protege of Abubacer. Abu Ishak ibn al-Bitrogi, known by the
scholastics as Alpetragius, another disciple of Abubacer and a
contemporary of Averroes, advanced a theory on planetary motion
wherein he wished to account for the phenomena peculiar to the
wandering stars, by compounding rotations of homocentric
spheres; his treatise, which was more neo-Platonic than
Peripatetic, seemed to be a Greek book altered, or else a simple
plagiarism. Less inflexible in his Peripateticism than Averroes
and Alpetragius, Moses ben Maimun, called Maimonides
(1139-1204), accepted Ptolemy's astronomy despite its
incompatibility with Aristotelean physics, although he regarded
Aristotle's sublunary physics as absolutely true.
IV. ARABIAN TRADITION AND LATIN SCHOLASTICISM
It cannot be said exactly when the first translations of Arabic
writings began to be received by the Christians of the West, but
it was certainly previously to the time of Gerbert (Sylvester
II; about 930-1003). Gerbert used treatises translated from the
Arabic, and containing instructions on the use of astronomical
instruments, notably the astrolabe, to which instrument Hermann
the Lame (1013-54) devoted part of his researches. In the
beginning of the twelfth century the contributions of Mohammedan
science and philosophy to Latin Christendom became more and more
frequent and important. About 1120 or 1130 Adelard of Bath
translated the "Elements" of Euclid, and various astronomical
treatises; in 1141 Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, found
two translators, Hermann the Second (or the Dalmatian) and
Robert of Retines, established in Spain; he engaged them to
translate the Koran into Latin, and in 1143 these same
translators made Christendom acquainted with Ptolemy's
planisphere. Under the direction of Raimond (Archbishop of
Toledo, 1130; d. 1150), Domengo Gondisalvi (Gonsalvi;
Gundissalinus), Archdeacon of Segovia, began to collaborate with
the converted Jew, John of Luna, erroneously called John of
Seville (Johannes Hispalensis). While John of Luna applied
himself to works in mathematics, he also assisted Gondisalvi in
translating into Latin a part of Aristotle's physics, the "De
Caelo" and the "Metaphysics", besides treatises by Avicenna,
Al-Gazali, Al-Farabi, and perhaps Salomon ibn Gebirol
(Avicebron). About 1134 John of Luna translated Al-Fergani's
treatise "Astronomy", which was an abridgement of the
"Almagest", thereby introducing Christians to the Ptolemaic
system, while at the same time his translations, made in
collaboration with Gondisalvi, familiarized the Latins with the
physical and metaphysical doctrines of Aristotle. Indeed the
influence of Aristotle's "Physics" was already apparent in the
writings of the most celebrated masters of the school of
Chartres (from 1121 until before 1155), and of Gilbert de la
Porree (1070-1154).
The abridgement of Al-Fergani's "Astronomy", translated by John
of Luna, does not seem to have been the first work in which the
Latins were enabled to read the exposition of Ptolemy's system;
it was undoubtedly preceded by a more complete treatise, the "De
Scientia stellarum" of Albategnius (Al-Battani), latinized by
Plato of Tivoli about 1120. However, the "Almagest" itself was
still unknown. Moved by a desire to read and translate Ptolemy's
immortal work, Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) left Italy and went
to Toledo, eventually making the translation which he finished
in 1175. Besides the "Almagest", Gerard rendered into Latin
other works, of which we have a list comprising seventy-four
different treatises. Some of these were writings of Greek
origin, and included a large portion of the works of Aristotle,
a treatise by Archimedes, Euclid's "Elements" (completed by
Hypsicles), and books by Hippocrates. Others were Arabic
writings, such as the celebrated "Book of Three Brothers",
composed by the Beni Musa, "Optics" by Ibn Al-Haitam (the
Alhazen of the Scholastics), "Astronomy" by Geber, and "De motu
octavae sphaerae" by Thabit ibn Kurrah. Moreover, in order to
spread the study of Ptolemaic astronomy, Gerard composed at
Toledo his "Theoricae planetarum", which during the Middle Ages
became one of the classics of astronomical instruction.
Beginners who obtained their first cosmographic information
through the study of the "Sphaera", written about 1230 by
Joannes de Sacrobosco, could acquire a knowledge of eccentrics
and epicycles by reading the "Theoricae planetarum" of Gerard of
Cremona. In fact, until the sixteenth century, most astronomical
treatises assumed the form of commentaries, either on the
"Sphaera", or the "Theoricae planetarum".
"Aristotle's philosophy", wrote Roger Bacon in 1267, "reached a
great development among the Latins when Michael Scot appeared
about 1230, bringing with him certain parts of the mathematical
and physical treatises of Aristotle and his learned
commentators". Among the Arabic writings made known to
Christians by Michael Scot (before 1291; astrologer to Frederick
II) were the treatises of Aristotle and the "Theory of Planets",
which Alpetragius had composed in accordance with the hypothesis
of homocentric spheres. The translation of this last work was
completed in 1217. By propagating among the Latins the
commentaries on Averroes and on Alpetragius's theory of the
planets, as well as a knowledge of the treatises of Aristotle,
Michael Scot developed in them an intellectual disposition which
might be termed Averroism, and which consisted in a
superstitious respect for the word of Aristotle and his
commentator.
There was a metaphysical Averroism which, because professing the
doctrine of the substantial unity of all human intellects, was
in open conflict with Christian orthodoxy; but there was
likewise a physical Averroism which, in its blind confidence in
Peripatetic physics, held as absolutely certain all that the
latter taught on the subject of the celestial substance,
rejecting in particular the system of epicycles and eccentrics
in order to commend Alpetragius's astronomy of homocentric
spheres.
Scientific Averroism found partisans even among those whose
purity of faith constrained them to struggle against
metaphysical Averroism, and who were very often Peripatetics in
so far as was possible without formally contradicting the
teaching of the Church. For instance, William of Auvergne (d.
1249), who was the first to combat "Aristotle and his
sectarians" on metaphysical grounds, was somewhat misled by
Alpetragius's astronomy, which, moreover, he understood but
imperfectly. Albertus Magnus (1193 or 1205-1280) followed to a
great extent the doctrine of Ptolemy, although he was sometimes
influenced by the objections of Averroes or affected by
Alpetragius's principles. Vincent of Beauvais in his "Speculum
quadruplex", a vast encyclopaedic compilation published about
1250, seemed to attach great importance to the system of
Alpetragius, borrowing the exposition of it from Albertus
Magnus. Finally, even St. Thomas Aquinas gave evidence of being
extremely perplexed by the theory (1227-74) of eccentrics and
epicycles which justified celestial phenomena by contradicting
the principles of Peripatetic physics, and the theory of
Alpetragius which honoured these principles but did not go so
far as to represent their phenomena in detail.
This hesitation, so marked in the Dominican school, was hardly
less remarkable in the Franciscan. Robert Grosseteste or
Greathead (1175-1253), whose influence on Franciscan studies was
so great, followed the Ptolemaic system in his astronomical
writings, his physics being imbued with Alpetragius's ideas. St.
Bonaventure (1221-74) wavered between doctrines which he did not
thoroughly understand, and Roger Bacon (1214-92) in several of
his writings weighed with great care the arguments that could be
made to count for or against each of these two astronomical
theories, without eventually making a choice. Bacon, however,
was familiar with a method of figuration in the system of
eccentrics and epicycles which Alhazen had derived from the
Greeks; and in this figuration all the motions acknowledged by
Ptolemy were traced back to the rotation of solid orbs
accurately fitted one into the other. This representation, which
refuted most of the objections raised by Averroes against
Ptolemaic astronomy, contributed largely to propagate the
knowledge of this astronomy, and it seems that the first of the
Latins to adopt it and expatiate on its merits was the
Franciscan Bernard of Verdun (end of thirteenth century), who
had read Bacon's writings. In sublunary physics the authors whom
we have just mentioned did not show the hesitation that rendered
astronomical doctrines so perplexing, but on almost all points
adhered closely to Peripatetic opinions .
V. THE SCIENCE OF OBSERVATION AND ITS PROGRESS
ASTRONOMERS
THE STATICS OF JORDANUS
THIERRY OF FREIBERG
PIERRE OF MARICOURT
Averroism had rendered scientific progress impossible, but
fortunately in Latin Christendom it was to meet with two
powerful enemies: the unhampered curiosity of human reason, and
the authority of the Church. Encouraged by the certainty
resulting from experiments, astronomers rudely shook off the
yoke which Peripatetic physics had imposed upon them. The School
of Paris in particular was remarkable for its critical views and
its freedom of attitude towards the argument of authority. In
1290 William of Saint-Cloud determined with wonderful accuracy
the obliquity of the ecliptic and the time of the vernal
equinox, and his observations led him to recognize the
inaccuracies that marred the "Tables of Toledo", drawn up by
Al-Zarkali. The theory of the precession of the equinoxes,
conceived by the astronomers of Alfonso X of Castile, and the
"Alphonsine Tables" set up in accordance with this theory, gave
rise in the first half of the fourteenth century to the
observations, calculations, and critical discussions of Parisian
astronomers, especially of Jean des Linieres and his pupil John
of Saxonia or Connaught.
At the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the
fourteenth, sublunary physics owed great advancement to the
simultaneous efforts of geometricians and experimenters -- their
method and discoveries being duly boasted of by Roger Bacon who,
however, took no important part in their labours. Jordanus de
Nemore, a talented mathematician who, not later than about the
beginning of the thirteenth century, wrote treatises on
arithmetic and geometry, left a very short treatise on statics
in which, side by side with erroneous propositions, we find the
law of the equilibrium of the straight lever very correctly
established with the aid of the principle of virtual
displacements. The treatise, "De ponderibus", by Jordanus
provoked research on the part of various commentators, and one
of these, whose name is unknown and who must have written before
the end of the thirteenth century, drew, from the same principle
of virtual displacements, demonstrations, admirable in exactness
and elegance, of the law of the equilibrium of the bent lever,
and of the apparent weight (gravitas secundum situm) of a body
on an inclined plane.
Alhazen's "Treatise on Perspective" was read thoroughly by Roger
Bacon and his contemporaries, John Peckham (1228-91), the
English Franciscan, giving a summary of it. About 1270 Witelo
(or Witek; the Thuringopolonus), composed an exhaustive
ten-volume treatise on optics, which remained a classic until
the time of Kepler, who wrote a commentary on it.
Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, John Peckham, and Witelo were
deeply interested in the theory of the rainbow, and, like the
ancient meteorologists, they all took the rainbow to be the
image of the sun reflected in a sort of a concave mirror formed
by a cloud resolved into rain. In 1300 Thierry of Freiberg
proved by means of carefully-conducted experiments in which he
used glass balls filled with water, that the rays which render
the bow visible have been reflected on the inside of the
spherical drops of water, and he traced with great accuracy the
course of the rays which produce the rainbows respectively.
The system of Thierry of Freiberg, at least that part relating
to the primary rainbow, was reproduced about 1360 by Themon,
"Son of the Jew" (Themo ju d i), and, from his commentary on
"Meteors", it passed on down to the days of the Renaissance
when, having been somewhat distorted, it reappeared in the
writings of Alessandro Piccolomini, Simon Porta, and Marco and
Antonio de Dominis, being thus propagated until the time of
Descartes.
The study of the magnet had also made great progress in the
course of the thirteenth century; the permanent magnetization of
iron, the properties of the magnetic poles, the direction of the
Earth's action exerted on these poles or of their action on one
another, are all found very accurately described in a treatise
written in 1269 by Pierre of Maricourt (Petrus Peregrinus). Like
the work of Thierry of Freiberg on the rainbow, the "Epistola de
magnete" by Maricourt was a model of the art of logical sequence
between experiment and deduction.
VI. THE ARTICLES OF PARIS (1277)
POSSIBILITY OF VACUUM
The University of Paris was very uneasy because of the
antagonism existing between Christian dogmas and certain
Peripatetic doctrines, and on several occasions it combatted
Aristotelean influence. In 1277 Etienne Tempier, Bishop of
Paris, acting on the advice of the theologians of the Sorbonne,
condemned a great number of errors, some of which emanated from
the astrology, and others from the philosophy of the
Peripatetics. Among these errors considered dangerous to faith
were several which might have impeded the progress of physical
science, and hence it was that the theologians of Paris declared
erroneous the opinion maintaining that God Himself could not
give the entire universe a rectilinear motion, as the universe
would then leave a vacuum behind it, and also declared false the
notion that God could not create several worlds. These
condemnations destroyed certain essential foundations of
Peripatetic physics; because, although, in Aristotle's system,
such propositions were ridiculously untenable, belief in Divine
Omnipotence sanctioned them as possible, whilst waiting for
science to confirm them as true. For instance, Aristotle's
physics treated the existence of an empty space as a pure
absurdity; in virtue of the "Articles of Paris" Richard of
Middletown (about 1280) and, after him, many masters at Paris
and Oxford admitted that the laws of nature are certainly
opposed to the production of empty space, but that the
realization of such a space is not, in itself, contrary to
reason; thus, without any absurdity, one could argue on vacuum
and on motion in a vacuum. Next, in order that such arguments
might be legitimatized, it was necessary to create that branch
of mechanical science known as dynamics.
VII. THE EARTH'S MOTION
ORESME
The "Articles of Paris" were of about the same value in
supporting the question of the Earth's motion as in furthering
the progress of dynamics by regarding vacuum as something
conceivable.
Aristotle maintained that the first heaven (the firmament) moved
with a uniform rotary motion, and that the Earth was absolutely
stationary, and as these two propositions necessarily resulted
from the first principles relative to time and place, it would
have been absurd to deny them. However, by declaring that God
could endow the World with a rectilinear motion, the theologians
of the Sorbonne acknowledged that these two Aristotelean
propositions could not be imposed as a logical necessity and
thenceforth, whilst continuing to admit that, as a fact, the
Earth was immovable and that the heavens moved with a rotary
diurnal motion, Richard of Middletown and Duns Scotus (about
1275-1308) began to formulate hypotheses to the effect that
these bodies were animated by other motions, and the entire
school of Paris adopted the same opinion. Soon, however, the
Earth's motion was taught in the School of Paris, not as a
possibility, but as a reality. In fact, in the specific setting
forth of certain information given by Aristotle and Simplicius,
a principle was formulated which for three centuries was to play
a great role in statics, viz. that every heavy body tends to
unite its centre of gravity with the centre of the Earth.
When writing his "Questions" on Aristotle's "De Caelo" in 1368,
Albert of Helmstadt (or of Saxony) admitted this principle,
which he applied to the entire mass of the terrestrial element.
The centre of gravity of this mass is constantly inclined to
place itself in the centre of the universe, but, within the
terrestrial mass, the position of the centre of gravity is
incessantly changing. The principal cause of this variation is
the erosion brought about by the streams and rivers that
continually wear away the land surface, deepening its valleys
and carrying off all loose matter to the bed of the sea, thereby
producing a displacement of weight which entails a ceaseless
change in the position of the centre of gravity. Now, in order
to replace this centre of gravity in the centre of the universe,
the Earth moves without ceasing; and meanwhile a slow but
perpetual exchange is being effected between the continents and
the oceans. Albert of Saxony ventured so far as to think that
these small and incessant motions of the Earth could explain the
phenomena of the precession of the equinoxes. The same author
declared that one of his masters, whose name he did not
disclose, announced himself in favour of the daily rotation of
the Earth, inasmuch as he refuted the arguments that were
opposed to this motion. This anonymous master had a thoroughly
convinced disciple in Nicole Oresme who, in 1377, being then
Canon of Rouen and later Bishop of Lisieux, wrote a French
commentary on Aristotle's treatise "De Caelo", maintaining with
quite as much force as clearness that neither experiment nor
argument could determine whether the daily motion belonged to
the firmament of the fixed stars or to the Earth. He also showed
how to interpret the difficulties encountered in "the Sacred
Scriptures wherein it is stated that the sun turns, etc. It
might be supposed that here Holy Writ adapts itself to the
common mode of human speech, as also in several places, for
instance, where lt is written that God repented Himself, and was
angry and calmed Himself and so on, all of which is, however,
not to be taken in a strictly literal sense". Finally, Oresme
offered several considerations favourable to the hypothesis of
the Earth's daily motion. In order to refute one of the
objections raised by the Peripatetics against this point, Oresme
was led to explain how, in spite of this motion, heavy bodies
seemed to fall in a vertical line; he admitted their real motion
to be composed of a fall in a vertical line and a diurnal
rotation identical with that which they would have if bound to
the Earth. This is precisely the principle to which Galileo was
afterwards to turn.
VIII. PLURALITY OF WORLDS
Aristotle maintained the simultaneous existence of several
worlds to be an absurdity, his principal argument being drawn
from his theory of gravity, whence he concluded that two
distinct worlds could not coexist and be each surrounded by its
elements; therefore it would be ridiculous to compare each of
the planets to an earth similar to ours. In 1277 the theologians
of Paris condemned this doctrine as a denial of the creative
omnipotence of God; Richard of Middletown and Henry of Ghent
(who wrote about 1280), Guillaume Varon (who wrote a commentary
on the "Sentences" about 1300), and, towards 1320, Jean de
Bassols, William of Occam (d. after 1347), and Walter Burley (d.
about 1348) did not hesitate to declare that God could create
other worlds similar to ours. This doctrine, adopted by several
Parisian masters, exacted that the theory of gravity and natural
place developed by Aristotle be thoroughly changed; in fact, the
following theory was substituted for it. If some part of the
elements forming a world be detached from it and driven far
away, its tendency will be to move towards the world to which it
belongs and from which it was separated; the elements of each
world are inclined so to arrange themselves that the heaviest
will be in the centre and the lightest on the surface. This
theory of gravity appeared in the writings of Jean Buridan of
Bethune, who became rector of the University of Paris in 1327,
teaching at that institution until about 1360; and in 1377 this
same theory was formally proposed by Oresme. It was also
destined to be adopted by Copernicus and his first followers,
and to be maintained by Galileo, William Gilbert, and Otto von
Guericke.
IX. DYNAMICS
THEORY OF IMPETUS
INERTIA
CELESTIAL AND SUBLUNARY MECHANICS IDENTICAL
If the School of Paris completely transformed the Peripatetic
theory of gravity, it was equally responsible for the overthrow
of Aristotelean dynamics. Convinced that, in all motion, the
mover should be directly contiguous to the body moved, Aristotle
had proposed a strange theory of the motion of projectiles. He
held that the projectile was moved by the fluid medium, whether
air or water, through which it passed and this, by virtue of the
vibration brought about in the fluid at the moment of throwing,
and spread through it. In the sixth century of our era this
explanation was strenuously opposed by the Christian Stoic,
Joannes Philoponus, according to whom the projectile was moved
by a certain power communicated to it at the instant of
throwing; however, despite the objections raised by Philoponus,
Aristotle's various commentators, particularly Averroes,
continued to attribute the motion of the projectile to the
disturbance of the air, and Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Roger Bacon, Gilles of Rome, and Walter Burley persevered in
maintaining this error. By means of most spirited argumentation,
William of Occam made known the complete absurdity of the
Peripatetic theory of the motion of projectiles. Going back to
Philoponus's thesis, Buridan gave the name impetus to the virtue
or power communicated to the projectile by the hand or
instrument throwing it; he declared that in any given body in
motion, this impetus was proportional to the velocity, and that,
in different bodies in motion propelled by the same velocity,
the quantities of impetus were proportional to the mass or
quantity of matter defined as it was afterwards defined by
Newton.
In a projectile; impetus is gradually destroyed by the
resistance of air or other medium and is also destroyed by the
natural gravity of the body in motion, which gravity is opposed
to the impetus if the projectile be thrown upward; this struggle
explains the different peculiarities of the motion of
projectiles. In a falling body, gravity comes to the assistance
of impetus which it increases at every instant, hence the
velocity of the fall is increasing incessantly.
With the assistance of these principles concerning impetus,
Buridan accounts for the swinging of the pendulum. He likewise
analyses the mechanism of impact and rebound and, in this
connexion, puts forth very correct views on the deformations and
elastic reactions that arise in the contiguous parts of two
bodies coming into collision. Nearly all this doctrine of
impetus is transformed into a very correct mechanical theory if
one is careful to substitute the expression vis viva for
impetus. The dynamics expounded by Buridan were adopted in their
entirety by Albert of Saxony, Oresme, Marsile of Inghem, and the
entire School of Paris. Albert of Saxony appended thereto the
statement that the velocity of a falling body must be
proportional either to the time elapsed from the beginning of
the fall or to the distance traversed during this time. In a
projectile, the impetus is gradually destroyed either by the
resistance of the medium or by the contrary tendency of the
gravity natural to the body. Where these causes of destruction
do not exist, the impetus remains perpetually the same, as in
the case of a millstone exactly centred and not rubbing on its
axis; once set in motion it will turn indefinitely with the same
swiftness. It was under this form that the law of inertia at
first became evident to Buridan and Albert of Saxony. The
conditions manifested in this hypothetic millstone are realized
in the celestial orbs, as in these neither friction nor gravity
impedes motion; hence it may be admitted that each celestial orb
moves indefinitely by virtue of a suitable impetus communicated
to it by God at the moment of creation. It is useless to imitate
Aristotle and his commentators by attributing the motion of each
orb to a presiding spirit. This was the opinion proposed by
Buridan and adopted by Albert of Saxony; and whilst formulating
a doctrine from which modern dynamics was to spring, these
masters understood that the same dynamics governs both celestial
and sublunary bodies. Such an idea was directly opposed to the
essential distinction established by ancient physics between
these two kinds of bodies. Moreover, following William of Occam,
the masters of Paris rejected this distinction; they
acknowledged that the matter constituting celestial bodies was
of the same nature as that constituting sublunary bodies and
that, if the former remained perpetually the same, it was not
because they were, by nature, incapable of change and
destruction, but simply because the place in which they were
contained no agent capable of corrupting them. A century elapsed
between the condemnations pronounced by Etienne Tempier (1277)
and the editing of the "Traite du Ciel et du Monde" by Oresme
(1377) and, within that time, all the essential principles of
Aristotle's physics were undermined, and the great controlling
ideas of modern science formulated. This revolution was mainly
the work of Oxford Franciscans like Richard of Middletown, Duns
Scotus, and William of Occam, and of masters in the School of
Paris, heirs to the tradition inaugurated by these Franciscans;
among the Parisian masters Buridan, Albert of Saxony, and Oresme
were in the foremost rank.
X. PROPAGATION OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE SCHOOL OF PARIS IN GERMANY AND ITALY
PURBACH AND REGIOMONTANUS
NICHOLAS OF CUSA
VINCI
The great Western Schism involved the University of Paris in
politico-religious quarrels of extreme violence; the misfortunes
brought about by the conflict between the Armagnacs and
Burgundians and by the Hundred Years' War, completed what these
quarrels had begun, and the wonderful progress made by science
during the fourteenth century in the University of Paris
suddenly ceased. However, the schism contributed to the
diffusion of Parisian doctrines by driving out of Paris a large
number of brilliant men who had taught there with marked
success. In 1386 Marsile of Inghem (d. 1396), who had been one
of the most gifted professors of the University of Paris, became
rector of the infant University of Heidelberg, where he
introduced the dynamic theories of Buridan and Albert of Saxony.
About the same time, another master, reputedly of Paris,
Heinrich Heimbuch of Langenstein, or of Hesse, was chiefly
instrumental in founding the University of Vienna and, besides
his theological knowledge, brought thither the astronomical
tradition of Jean des Linieres and John of Saxony. This
tradition was carefully preserved in Vienna, being magnificently
developed there throughout the fifteenth century, and paving the
way for Georg Purbach (1423-61) and his disciple Johann Mueller
of Koenigsberg, surnamed Regiomontanus (1436-76). It was to the
writing of theories calculated to make the Ptolemaic system
known, to the designing and constructing of exact instruments,
to the multiplying of observations, and the preparing of tables
and almanacs (ephemerides), more accurate than those used by
astronomers up to that time, that Purbach and Regiomontanus
devoted their prodigious energy. By perfecting all the details
of Ptolemy's theories, which they never called in question, they
were most helpful in bringing to light the defects of these
theories and in preparing the materials by means of which
Copernicus was to build up his new astronomy.
Averroism flourished in the Italian Universities of Padua and
Bologna, which were noted for their adherence to Peripatetic
doctrines. Still from the beginning of the fifteenth century the
opinions of the School of Paris began to find their way into
these institutions, thanks to the teaching of Paolo Nicoletti of
Venice (flourished about 1420). It was there developed by his
pupil Gaetan of Tiene (d. 1465). These masters devoted special
attention to propagating the dynamics of impetus in Italy.
About the time that Paola of Venice was teaching at Padua,
Nicholas of Cusa came there to take his doctorate in law.
Whether it was then that the latter became initiated in the
physics of the School of Paris matters little, as in any event
it was from Parisian physics that he adopted those doctrines
that smacked least of Peripateticism. He became thoroughly
conversant with the dynamics of impetus and, like Buridan and
Albert of Saxony, attributed the motion of the celestial spheres
to the impetus which God had communicated to them in creating
them, and which was perpetuated because, in these spheres, there
was no element of destruction. He admitted that the Earth moved
incessantly, and that its motion might be the cause of the
precession of the equinoxes. In a note discovered long after his
death, he went so far as to attribute to the Earth a daily
rotation. He imagined that the sun, the moon, and the planets
were so many systems, each of which contained an earth and
elements analogous to our Earth and elements, and to account for
the action of gravity in each of these systems he followed
closely the theory of gravity advanced by Oresme.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was perhaps more thoroughly
convinced of the merits of the Parisian physics than any other
Italian master. A keen observer, and endowed with insatiable
curiosity, he had studied a great number of works, amongst which
we may mention the various treatises of the School of Jordanus,
various books by Albert of Saxony, and in all likelihood the
works of Nicholas of Cusa; then, profiting by the learning of
these scholars, he formally enunciated or else simply intimated
many new ideas. The statics of the School of Jordanus led him to
discover the law of the composition of concurrent forces stated
as follows: the two component forces have equal moments as
regards the direction of the resultant, and the resultant and
one of the components have equal moments as regards the
direction of the other component. The statics derived from the
properties which Albert of Saxony attributed to the centre of
gravity caused Vinci to recognize the law of the polygon of
support and to determine the centre of gravity of a tetrahedron.
He also presented the law of the equilibrium of two liquids of
different density in communicating tubes, and the principle of
virtual displacements seems to have occasioned his
acknowledgement of the hydrostatic law known as Pascal's. Vinci
continued to meditate on the properties of impetus, which he
called impeto or forza, and the propositions that he formulated
on the subject of this power very often showed a fairly clear
discernment of the law of the conservation of energy. These
propositions conducted him to remarkably correct and accurate
conclusions concerning the impossibility of perpetual motion.
Unfortunately he misunderstood the pregnant explanation,
afforded by the theory of impetus, regarding the acceleration of
falling bodies, and like the Peripatetics attributed this
acceleration to the impulsion of the encompassing air. However,
by way of compensation, he distinctly asserted that the velocity
of a body that falls freely is proportional to the time occupied
in the fall, and he understood in what way this law extends to a
fall on an inclined plane. When he wished to determine how the
path traversed by a falling body is connected with the time
occupied in the fall, he was confronted by a difficulty which,
in the seventeenth century, was likewise to baffle Baliani and
Gassendi.
Vinci was much engrossed in the analysis of the deformations and
elastic reactions which cause a body to rebound after it has
struck another, and this doctrine, formulated by Buridan, Albert
of Saxony, and Marsile of Inghem he applied in such a way as to
draw from it the explanation of the flight of birds. This flight
is an alternation of falls during which the bird compresses the
air beneath it, and of rebounds due to the elastic force of this
air. Until the great painter discovered this explanation, the
question of the flight of birds was always looked upon as a
problem in statics, and was likened to the swimming of a fish in
water. Vinci attached great importance to the views developed by
Albert of Saxony in regard to the Earth's equilibrium. Like the
Parisian master, he held that the centre of gravity within the
terrestrial mass is constantly changing under the influence of
erosion and that the Earth is continually moving so as to bring
this centre of gravity to the centre of the World. These small,
incessant motions eventually bring to the surface of the
continents those portions of earth that once occupied the bed of
the ocean and, to place this assertion of Albert of Saxony
beyond the range of doubt, Vinci devoted himself to the study of
fossils and to extremely cautious observations which made him
the creator of Stratigraphy. In many passages in his notes Vinci
asserts, like Nicholas of Cusa that the moon and the other
wandering stars are worlds analogous to ours, that they carry
seas upon their surfaces, and are surrounded by air; and the
development of this opinion led him to talk of the gravity
binding to each of these stars the elements that belonged to it.
On the subject of this gravity he professed a theory similar to
Oresme's. Hence it would seem that, in almost every particular,
Vinci was a faithful disciple of the great Parisian masters of
the fourteenth century, of Buridan, Albert of Saxony, and
Oresme.
XI. ITALIAN AVERROISM AND ITS TENDENCIES TO ROUTINE
ATTEMPTS AT RESTORING THE ASTRONOMY OF HOMOCENTRIC SPHERES
Whilst, through the anti-Peripatetic influence of the School of
Paris, Vinci reaped a rich harvest of discoveries, innumerable
Italians devoted themselves to the sterile worship of defunct
ideas with a servility that was truly astonishing. The
Averroists did not wish to acknowledge as true anything out of
conformity with the ideas of Aristotle as interpreted by
Averroes; with Pompanazzi (1462-1526), the Alexandrists, seeking
their inspiration further back in the past, refused to
understand Aristotle otherwise than he had been understood by
Alexander of Aphrodisias; and the Humanists, solicitous only for
purity of form, would not consent to use any technical language
whatever and rejected all ideas that were not sufficiently vague
to be attractive to orators and poets; thus Averroists,
Alexandrists, and Humanists proclaimed a truce to their vehement
discussions so as to combine against the "language of Paris",
the "logic of Paris", and the "physics of Paris". It is
difficult to conceive the absurdities to which these minds were
led by their slavish surrender to routine. A great number of
physicists, rejecting the Parisian theory of impetus, returned
to the untenable dynamics of Aristotle, and maintained that the
projectile was moved by the ambient air. In 1499 Nicolo Vernias
of Chieti, an Averroist professor at Padua, taught that if a
heavy body fell it was in consequence of the motion of the air
surrounding it.
A servile adoration of Peripateticism prompted many so-called
philosophers to reject the Ptolemaic system, the only one which,
at that time, could satisfy the legitimate exigencies of
astronomers, and to readopt the hypothesis of homocentric
spheres. They held as null and void the innumerable observations
that showed changes in the distance of each planet from the
Earth. Alessandro Achillini of Bologna (1463-1512), an
uncompromising Averroist and a strong opponent of the theory of
impetus and of all Parisian doctrines, inaugurated, in his
treatise "De orbibus" (1498), a strange reaction against
Ptolemaic astronomy; Agostino Nifo (1473-1538) laboured for the
same end in a work that has not come down to us; Girolamo
Fracastorio (1483-1553) gave us, in 1535, his book "De
homocentricis", and Gianbattista Amico (1536), and Giovanni
Antonio Delfino (1559) published small works in an endeavour to
restore the system of homocentric spheres.
XII. THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Although directed by tendencies diametrically opposed to the
true scientific spirit, the efforts made by Averroists to
restore the astronomy of homocentric spheres were perhaps a
stimulus to the progress of science, inasmuch as they accustomed
physicists to the thought that the Ptolemaic system was not the
only astronomical doctrine possible, or even the best that could
be desired. Thus, in their own way, the Averroists paved the way
for the Copernican revolution. The movements forecasting this
revolution were noticeable in the middle of the fourteenth
century in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, and in the
beginning of the fifteenth century in the notes of Vinci, both
of these eminent scientists being well versed in Parisian
physics.
Celio Calcagnini proposed, in his turn, to explain the daily
motion of the stars by attributing to the Earth a rotation from
West to East, complete in one sidereal day. His dissertation,
"Quod c lum stet, terra vero moveatur", although seeming to have
been written about 1530, was not published until 1544, when it
appeared in a posthumous edition of the author's works.
Calcagnini declared that the Earth, originally in equilibrium in
the centre of the universe, received a first impulse which
imparted to it a rotary motion, and this motion, to which
nothing was opposed, was indefinitely preserved by virtue of the
principle set forth by Buridan and accepted by Albert of Saxony
and Nicholas of Cusa. According to Calcagnini the daily rotation
of the Earth was accompanied by an oscillation which explained
the movement of the precession of the equinoxes. Another
oscillation set the waters of the sea in motion and determined
the ebb and flow of the tides. This last hypothesis was to be
maintained by Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) in his "Quaestiones
peripateticae" (1569), and to inspire Galileo, who,
unfortunately, was to seek in the phenomena of the tides his
favourite proof of the Earth's rotation.
The "De revolutionibus orbium c lestium libri sex" were printed
in 1543, a few months after the death of Copernicus (1473-1543),
but the principles of the astronomic system proposed by this man
of genius had been published as early as 1539 in the "Narratio
prima" of his disciple, Joachim Rhaeticus (1514-76). Copernicus
adhered to the ancient astronomical hypotheses which claimed
that the World was spherical and limited, and that all celestial
motions were decomposable into circular and uniform motions; but
he held that the firmament of fixed stars was immovable, as also
the sun, which was placed in the centre of this firmament. To
the Earth he attributed three motions: a circular motion by
which the centre of the Earth described with uniform velocity a
circle situated in the plane of the ecliptic and eccentric to
the sun; a daily rotation on an axis inclined towards the
ecliptic, and finally, a rotation of this axis around an axis
normal to the ecliptic and passing through the centre of the
Earth. The time occupied by this last rotation was a little
longer than that required for the circular motion of the centre
of the Earth which produced the phenomenon of the precession of
the equinoxes. To the five planets Copernicus ascribed motions
analogous to those with which the Earth was provided, and he
maintained that the moon moved in a circle around the Earth.
Of the Copernican hypotheses, the newest was that according to
which the Earth moved in a circle around the sun. From the days
of Aristarchus of Samos and Seleucus no one had adopted this
view. Medieval astronomers had all rejected it, because they
supposed that the stars were much too close to the Earth and the
sun, and that an annual circular motion of the Earth might give
the stars a perceptible parallax. Still, on the other hand, we
have seen that various authors had proposed to attribute to the
Earth one or the other of the two motions which Copernicus added
to the annual motion. To defend the hypothesis of the daily
motion of the Earth against the objections formulated by
Peripatetic physics, Copernicus invoked exactly the same reasons
as Oresme, and in order to explain how each planet retains the
various parts of its elements, he adopted the theory of gravity
proposed by the eminent master. Copernicus showed himself the
adherent of Parisian physics even in the following opinion,
enunciated accidently: the acceleration of the fall of heavy
bodies is explained by the continual increase which impetus
receives from gravity.
XIII. FORTUNES OF THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Copernicus and his disciple Rhaeticus very probably regarded the
motions which their theory ascribed to the Earth and the
planets, the sun's rest and that of the firmament of fixed
stars, as the real motions or real rest of these bodies. The "De
revolutionibus orbium caelestium libri sex" appeared with an
anonymous preface which inspired an entirely different idea.
This preface was the work of the Lutheran theologian Osiander
(1498-1552), who therein expressed the opinion that the
hypotheses proposed by philosophers in general, and by
Copernicus in particular, were in no wise calculated to acquaint
us with the reality of things: "Neque enim necesse est eas
hypotheses esse veras, imo, ne verisimiles quidem, sed sufficit
hoc unum si calculum observationibus congruentem exhibeant".
Osiander's view of astronomical hypotheses was not new. Even in
the days of Grecian antiquity a number of thinkers had
maintained that the sole object of these hypotheses was to "save
appearances", sozein ta phainomena; and in the Middle Ages, as
well as in antiquity, this method continued to be that of
philosophers who wished to make use of Ptolemaic astronomy
whilst at the same time upholding the Peripatetic physics
absolutely incompatible with this astronomy. Osiander's doctrine
was therefore readily received, first of all by astronomers who,
without believing the Earth's motion to be a reality, accepted
and admired the kinetic combinations conceived by Copernicus, as
these combinations provided them with better means than could be
offered by the Ptolemaic system for figuring out the motion of
the moon and the phenomena of the precession of the equinoxes.
One of the astronomers who most distinctly assumed this attitude
in regard to Ptolemy's system was Erasmus Reinhold (1511-53),
who, although not admitting the Earth's motion, professed a
great admiration for the system of Copernicus and used it in
computing new astronomical tables, the "Prutenicae tabulae"
(1551), which were largely instrumental in introducing to
astronomers the kinetic combinations originated by Copernicus.
The "Prutenicae tabulae" were especially employed by the
commission which in 1582 effected the Gregorian reform of the
calendar. Whilst not believing in the Earth's motion, the
members of this commission did not hesitate to use tables
founded on a theory of the precession of the equinoxes and
attributing a certain motion to the earth.
However, the freedom permitting astronomers to use all
hypotheses qualified to account for phenomena was soon
restricted by the exigencies of Peripatetic philosophers and
Protestant theologians. Osiander had written his celebrated
preface to Copernicus's book with a view to warding off the
attacks of theologians, but in this he did not succeed. Martin
Luther, in his "Tischrede", was the first to express indignation
at the impiety of those who admitted the hypothesis of solar
rest. Melanchthon, although acknowledging the purely
astronomical advantages of the Copernican system, strongly
combatted the hypothesis of the Earth's motion (1549), not only
with the aid of arguments furnished by Peripatetic physics but
likewise, and chiefly, with the assistance of numerous texts
taken from Holy Writ. Kaspar Peucer (1525-1602), Melanchthon's
son-in-law, whilst endeavouring to have his theory of the
planets harmonize with the progress which the Copernican system
had made in this regard, nevertheless rejected the Copernican
hypotheses as absurd (1571).
It then came to be exacted of astronomical hypotheses that not
only, as Osiander had desired, the result of their calculations
be conformable to facts, but also that they be not refuted
"either in the name of the principles of physics or in the name
of the authority of the Sacred Scriptures". This criterion was
explicitly formulated in 1578 by a Lutheran, the Danish
astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), and it was precisely by
virtue of these two requirements that the doctrines of Galileo
were to be condemned by the Inquisition in 1616 and 1633. Eager
not to admit any hypothesis that would conflict with
Aristotelean physics or be contrary to the letter of the Sacred
Scriptures, and yet most desirous to retain all the astronomical
advantages of the Copernican system, Tycho Brahe proposed a new
system which virtually consisted in leaving the Earth motionless
and in moving the other heavenly bodies in such a way that their
displacement with regard to the Earth might remain the same as
in the system of Copernicus. Moreover, although posing as the
defender of Aristotelean physics, Tycho Brahe dealt it a
disastrous blow. In 1572 a star, until then unknown, appeared in
the constellation of Cassiopeia, and in showing accurate
observations that the new astral body was really a fixed star,
Tycho Brahe proved conclusively that the celestial world was
not, as Aristotle would have had us believe, formed of a
substance exempt from generation and destruction.
The Church had not remained indifferent to the hypothesis of the
Earth's motion until the time of Tycho Brahe, as it was amongst
her members that this hypothesis had found its first defenders,
counting adherents even in the extremely orthodox University of
Paris. At the time of defending this hypothesis, Oresme was
Canon of Rouen, and immediately after he was promoted to the
Bishopric of Lisieux; Nicholas of Cusa was Bishop of Brixen and
cardinal, and was entrusted with important negotiations by
Eugenius IV, Nicholas V, and Pius II; Calcagnini was
prothonotary Apostolic; Copernicus was Canon of Thorn, and it
was Cardinal Schomberg who urged him to publish his work, the
dedication of which was accepted by Paul III. Besides, Oresme
had made clear how to interpret the Scriptural passages claimed
to be opposed to the Copernican system, and in 1584 Didacus a
Stunica of Salamanca found in Holy Writ texts which could be
invoked with just as much certainty in favour of the Earth's
motion. However, in 1595 the Protestant senate of the University
of Tuebingen compelled Kepler to retract the chapter in his
"Mysterium cosmographicum", in which he had endeavoured to make
the Copernican system agree with Scripture.
Christopher Clavius (1537-1612), a Jesuit, and one of the
influential members of the commission that reformed the
Gregorian Calendar, seemed to be the first Catholic astronomer
to adopt the double test imposed upon astronomical hypotheses by
Tycho Brahe, and to decide (1581) that the suppositions of
Copernicus were to be rejected, as opposed both to Peripatetic
physics and to Scripture; on the other hand, at the end of his
life and under the influence of Galileo's discoveries, Clavius
appeared to have assumed a far more favourable attitude towards
Copernican doctrines. The enemies of Aristotelean philosophy
gladly adopted the system of Copernicus, considering its
hypotheses as so many propositions physically true, this being
the case with Pierre de La Ramee, called Petrus Ramus (1502-72),
and especially with Giordano Bruno (about 1550-1600). The
physics developed by Bruno, in which he incorporated the
Copernican hypothesis, proceeded from Nicole, Oresme, and
Nicholas of Cusa; but chiefly from the physics taught in the
University of Paris in the fourteenth century. The infinite
extent of the universe and the plurality of worlds were admitted
as possible by many theologians at the end of the thirteenth
century, and the theory of the slow motion which gradually
causes the central portions of the Earth to work to the surface
had been taught by Albert of Saxony before it attracted the
attention of Vinci. The solution of Peripatetic arguments
against the Earth's motion and the theory of gravity called
forth by the comparison of the planets with the Earth would
appear to have been borrowed by Bruno from Oresme. The apostasy
and heresies for which Bruno was condemned in 1600 had nothing
to do with the physical doctrines he had espoused, which
included in particular Copernican astronomy. In fact it does not
seem that, in the sixteenth century, the Church manifested the
slightest anxiety concerning the system of Copernicus.
XIV. THEORY OF THE TIDES
It is undoubtedly to the great voyages that shed additional
lustre on the close of the fifteenth century that we must
attribute the importance assumed in the sixteenth century by the
problem of the tides, and the great progress made at that time
towards the solution of this problem. The correlation existing
between the phenomenon of high and low tide and the course of
the moon was known even in ancient times. Posidonius accurately
described it; the Arabian astronomers were also familiar with
it, and the explanation given of it in the ninth century by
Albumazar in his "Introductorium magnum ad Astronomiam" remained
a classic throughout the Middle Ages. The observation of tidal
phenomena very naturally led to the supposition that the moon
attracted the waters of the ocean and, in the thirteenth
century, William of Auvergne compared this attraction to that of
the magnet for iron. However, the mere attraction of the moon
did not suffice to account for the alternation of spring and
neap tides, which phenomenon clearly indicated a certain
intervention of the sun. In his "Questions sur les livres des
Meteores", which appeared during the latter half of the
fourteenth century, Themon, "Son of the Jew", introduced in a
vague sort of way the idea of superposing two tides, the one due
to the sun and the other to the moon.
In 1528 this idea was very clearly endorsed by Federico
Grisogone of Zara, a Dalmatian who taught medicine at Padua.
Grisogone declared that, under the action of the moon
exclusively, the sea would assume an ovoid shape, its major axis
being directed towards the centre of the moon; that the action
of the sun would also give it an ovoid shape, less elongated
than the first, its major axis being directed towards the centre
of the sun; and that the variation of sea level, at all times
and in all places, was obtained by adding the elevation or
depression produced by the solar tide to the elevation or
depression produced by the lunar tide. In 1557 Girolamo Cardano
accepted and briefly explained Grisogone's theory. In 1559 a
posthumous work by Delfino gave a description of the phenomena
of the tides, identical with that deduced from the mechanism
conceived by Grisogone. The doctrine of the Dalmatian physician
was reproduced by Paolo Gallucci in 1588, and by Annibale
Raimondo in 1589; and in 1600 Claude Duret, who had plagiarized
Delfino's treatise, published in France the description of the
tides given in that work.
XV. STATICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
STEVINUS
When writing on statics Cardano drew upon two sources, the
writings of Archimedes and the treatises of the School of
Jordanus; besides, he probably plagiarized the notes left by
Vinci, and it was perhaps from this source that he took the
theorem: a system endowed with weight is in equilibrium when the
centre of gravity of this system is the lowest possible.
Nicolo Tartaglia (about 1500-57), Cardano's antagonist,
shamelessly purloined a supposedly forgotten treatise by one of
Jordanus's commentators. Ferrari, Cardano's faithful disciple,
harshly rebuked Tartaglia for the theft, which nevertheless had
the merit of re-establishing the vogue of certain discoveries of
the thirteenth century, especially the law of the equilibrium of
a body supported by an inclined plane. By another and no less
barefaced plagiarism, Tartaglia published under his own name a
translation of Archimedes's "Treatise on floating bodies" made
by William of Moerbeke at the end of the thirteenth century.
This publication, dishonest though it was, helped to give
prominence to the study of Archimedes's mechanical labours,
which study exerted the greatest influence over the progress of
science at the end of the sixteenth century, the blending of
Archimedean mathematics with Parisian physics, generating the
movement that terminated in Galileo's work. The translation and
explanation of the works of Archimedes enlisted the attention of
geometricians such as Franeesco Maurolycus of Messina
(1494-1575) and Federico Commandino of Urbino (1509-75), and
these two authors, continuing the work of the great Syracusan,
determined the position of the centre of gravity of various
solids; in addition Coinmandin translated and explained Pappus's
mathematical "Collection", and the fragment of "Mechanics" by
Heron of Alexandria appended thereto. Admiration for these
monuments of ancient science inspired a number of Italians with
a profound contempt for medieval statics. The fecundity of the
principle of virtual displacements, so happily employed by the
School of Jordanus, was ignored; and, deprived of the laws
discovered by this school and of the additions made to them by
Vinci, the treatises on statics written by over-enthusiastic
admirers of the Archimedean method were notably deficient. Among
the authors of these treatises Guidobaldo dal Monte (1545-1607)
and Giovanni Battista Benedetti (1530-90) deserve special
mention.
Of the mathematicians who, in statics, claimed to follow
exclusively the rigorous methods of Archimedes and the Greek
geometricians, the most illustrious was Simon Stevinus of Bruges
(1548-1620). Through him the statics of solid bodies recovered
all that had been gained by the School of Jordanus and Vinci,
and lost by the contempt of such men as Guidobaldo del Monte and
Benedetti. The law of the equilibrium of the lever, one of the
fundamental propositions of which Stevinus made use, was
established by him with the aid of an ingenious demonstration
which Galileo was also to employ, and which is found in a small
anonymous work of the thirteenth century. In order to confirm
another essential principle of his theory, the law of the
equilibrium of a body on an inclined plane, Stevinus resorted to
the impossibility of perpetual motion, which had been affirmed
with great precision by Vinci and Cardano. Stevinus's chief
glory lay in his discoveries in hydrostatics; and the
determining of the extent and point of application of the
pressure on the slanting inner side of a vessel by the liquid
contained therein was in itself sufficient to entitle this
geometrician from Bruges to a foremost place among the creators
of the theory of the equilibrium of fluids. Benedetti was on the
point of enunciating the principle known as Pascal's Law, and an
insignificant addition permitted Mersenne to infer this
principle and the idea of the hydraulic press from what the
Italian geometrician had written. Benedetti had justified his
propositions by using as an axiom the law of the equilibrium of
liquids in communicating vessels, and prior to this time Vinci
had followed the same logical proceeding.
XVI. DYNAMICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The geometricians who, in spite of the stereotyped methods of
Averroism and the banter of Humanism, continued to cultivate the
Parisian dynamics of impetus, were rewarded by splendid
discoveries. Dissipating the doubt in which Albert of Saxony had
remained enveloped, Vinci had declared the velocity acquired by
a falling body to be proportional to the time occupied by the
fall, but he did not know how to determine the law connecting
the time consumed in falling with the space passed over by the
falling body. Nevertheless to find this law it would have
sufficed to invoke the following proposition: in a uniformly
varied motion, the space traversed by the moving body is equal
to that which it would traverse in a uniform motion whose
duration would be that of the preceding motion, and whose
velocity would be the same as that which affected the preceding
motion at the mean instant of its duration. This proposition was
known to Oresme, who had demonstrated it exactly as it was to be
demonstrated later by Galileo; it was enunciated and discussed
at the close of the fourteenth century by all the logicians who,
in the University of Oxford, composed the school of William of
Heytesbury, Chancellor of Oxford in 1375; it was subsequently
examined or invoked in the fifteenth century by all the Italians
who became the commentators of these logicians; and finally, the
masters of the University of Paris, contemporaries of Vinci,
taught and demonstrated it as Oresme had done.
This law which Vinci was not able to determine was published in
1545 by a Spanish Dominican, Domingo Soto (1494-1560), an
alumnus of the University of Paris, and professor of theology at
Alcala de Henares, and afterwards at Salamanca. He formulated
these two laws thus:
The velocity of a falling body increases proportionally to the
time of the fall.
The space traversed in a uniformly varied motion is the same as
in a uniform motion occupying the same time, its velocity being
the mean velocity of the former.
In addition Soto declared that the motion of a body thrown
vertically upward is uniformly retarded. It should be mentioned
that all these propositions were formulated by the celebrated
Dominican as if in relation to truths generally admitted by the
masters among whom he lived.
The Parisian theory, maintaining that the accelerated fall of
bodies was due to the effect of a continual increase of impetus
caused by gravity, was admitted by Julius Caesar Scaliger
(1484-1558), Benedetti, and Gabriel Vasquez (1551-1604), the
celebrated Jesuit theologian. The first of these authors
presented this theory in such a way that uniform acceleration of
motion seemed naturally to follow from it.
Soto, Tartaglia, and Cardano made strenuous efforts, after the
manner of Vinci, to explain the motion of projectiles by
appealing to the conflict between impetus and gravity, but their
attempts were frustrated by a Peripatetic error which several
Parisian masters had long before rejected. They believed that
the motion of the projectile was accelerated from the start, and
attributed this initial acceleration to an impulse communicated
by the vibrating air. Indeed, throughout the sixteenth century,
the Italian Averroists continued to attribute to the ambient air
the very transportation of the projectile. Tartaglia empirically
discovered that a piece of artillery attained its greatest range
when pointed at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizon.
Bruno insisted upon Oresme's explanation of the fact that a body
appears to fall in a vertical line in spite of the Earth's
motion; to obtain the trajectory of this body it is necessary to
combine the action of its weight with the impetus which the
Earth has imparted to it. It was as follows that Benedetti set
forth the law followed by such an impetus. A body whirled in a
circle and suddenly left to itself will move in a straight line
tangent to the circle at the very point where the body happened
to be at the moment of its release. For this achievement
Benedetti deserves to be ranked among the most valuable
contributors to the discovery of the law of inertia. In 1553
Benedetti advanced the following argument: in air, or any fluid
whatever, ten equal stones fall with the same velocity as one of
their number; and if all were combined they would still fall
with the same velocity; therefore, in a fluid two stones, one of
which is ten times heavier than the other, fall with the same
velocity. Benedetti lauded the extreme novelty of this argument
with which, in reality, many scholastics had been familiar, but
which they had all claimed was not conclusive, because the
resistance which the air offered to the heavier stone could
certainly not be ten times that which it opposed to the lighter
one. Achillini was one of those who clearly maintained this
principle. That it might lead to a correct conclusion,
Benedetti's argument had to be restricted to the motion of
bodies in a vacuum, and this is what was done by Galileo.
XVII. GALILEO'S WORK
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had been in youth a staunch
Peripatetic, but was later converted to the Copernican system,
and devoted most of his efforts to its defence. The triumph of
the system of Copernicus could only be secured by the perfecting
of mechanics, and especially by solving the problem presented by
the fall of bodies, when the earth was supposed to be in motion.
It was towards this solution that many of Galileo's researches
were directed, and to bring his labours to a successful issue he
had to adopt certain principles of Parisian dynamics.
Unfortunately, instead of using them all, he left it to others
to exhaust their fecundity.
Galilean statics was a compromise between the incorrect method
inaugurated in Aristotle's "Mechanical Questions" and the
correct method of virtual displacements successfully applied by
the School of Jordanus. Imbued with ideas that were still
intensely Peripatetic, it introduced the consideration of a
certain impeto or momento, proportional to the velocity of the
moving body and not unlike the impetus of the Parisians.
Galilean hydrostatics also showed an imperfect form of the
principle of virtual displacements, which seemed to have been
suggested to the great Pisan by the effectual researches made on
the theory of running water by his friend Benedetto Castelli,
the Benedictine (1577-1644). At first Galileo asserted that the
velocity of a falling body increased proportionally to the space
traversed, and afterwards, by an ingenious demonstration, he
proved the utter absurdity of such a law. He then taught that
the motion of a freely falling body was uniformly accelerated;
in favour of this law, he contented himself with appealing to
its simplicity without considering the continual increase of
impetus under the influence of gravity. Gravity creates, in
equal periods, a new and uniform impetus which, added to that
already acquired, causes the total impetus to increase in
arithmetical progression according to the time occupied in the
fall; hence the velocity of the falling body. This argument
towards which all Parisian tradition had been tending and which,
in the last place, had been broached by Scaliger, leads to our
modern law: a constant force produces uniformly accelerated
motion. In Galileo's work there is no trace either of the
argument or of the conclusion deduced therefrom; however, the
argument itself was carefully developed by Galileo's friend,
Giambattista Baliani (1582-1666).
From the very definition of velocity, Baliani endeavoured to
deduce the law according to which the space traversed by a
falling body is increased proportionally to the time occupied in
the fall. Here he was confronted by a difficulty that had also
baffled Vinci; however, he eventually anticipated its solution,
which was given, after similar hesitation, by another of
Galileo's disciples, Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Galileo had
reached the law connecting the time occupied in the fall with
the space traversed by a falling body, by using a demonstration
that became celebrated as the "demonstration of the triangle".
It was textually that given by Oresme in the fourteenth century
and, as we have seen, Soto had thought of using Oresme's
proposition in the study of the accelerated fall of bodies.
Galileo extended the laws of freely falling bodies to a fall
down an inclined plane and subjected to the test of experiment
the law of the motion of a weight on an inclined plane.
A body which, without friction or resistance of any kind, would
describe the circumference of a circle concentric with the Earth
would retain an invariable impeto or momento, as gravity would
in no wise tend to increase or destroy this impeto: this
principle which belonged to the dynamics of Buridan and Albert
of Saxony, was acknowledged by Galileo. On a small surface, a
sphere concentric with the Earth is apparently merged into a
horizontal plane; a body thrown upon a horizontal plane and free
from all friction would therefore assume a motion apparently
rectilinear and uniform. It is only under this restricted and
erroneous form that Galileo recognized the law of inertia and in
this he was the faithful disciple of the School of Paris.
If a heavy body moved by an impeto that would make it describe a
circle concentric with the Earth is, moreover, free to fall, the
impeto of uniform rotation and gravity are component forces.
Over a small extent the motion produced by this impeto may be
assumed to be rectilinear, horizontal, and uniform; hence the
approximate law may be enunciated as follows: a heavy body, to
which a horizontal initial velocity has been imparted at the
very moment that it is abandoned to the action of gravity,
assumes a motion which is sensibly the combination of a uniform
horizontal motion with the vertical motion that it would assume
without initial velocity. Galileo then demonstrated that the
trajectory of this heavy body is a parabola with vertical axis.
This theory of the motion of projectiles rests upon principles
in no wise conformable to an exact knowledge of the law of
inertia and which are, at bottom, identical with those invoked
by Oresme when he wished to explain how, despite the Earth's
rotation, a body seems to fall vertically. The argument employed
by Galileo did not permit him to state how a projectile moves
when its initial velocity is not horizontal.
Evangelista Torricelli (1608-47), a disciple of Castelli and of
Galileo, extended the latter's method to the case of a
projectile whose initial velocity had a direction other than
horizontal, and proved that the trajectory remained a parabola
with a vertical axis. On the other hand Gassendi showed that in
this problem of the motion of projectiles, the real law of
inertia which had just been formulated by Descartes should be
substituted for the principles admitted by the Parisian dynamics
of the fourteenth century.
Mention should be made of Galileo's observations on the duration
of the oscillation of the pendulum, as these observations opened
up to dynamics a new field. Galileo's progress in dynamics
served as a defence of the Copernican system and the discoveries
which, with the aid of the telescope, he was able to make in the
heavens contributed to the same end. The spots on the sun's
surface and the mountains, similar to those upon the Earth, that
hid from view certain portions of the lunar disc, gave ample
proof of the fact that the celestial bodies were not, as
Aristotelean physics had maintained, formed of an incorruptible
substance unlike sublunary elements; moreover, the role of
satellite which, in this heliocentric astronomy, the moon played
in regard to the Earth was carried out in relation to Jupiter by
the two "Medicean planets", which Galileo had been the first to
discover. Not satisfied with having defeated the arguments
opposed to the Copernican system by adducing these excellent
reasons, Galileo was eager to establish a positive proof in
favour of this system. Inspired perhaps by Calcagnini, he
believed that the phenomenon of the tides would furnish him the
desired proof and he consequently rejected every explanation of
ebb and flow founded on the attraction of the sun and the moon,
in order to attribute the motion of the seas to the centrifugal
force produced by terrestrial rotation. Such an explanation
would connect the period of high tide with the sidereal instead
of the lunar day, thus contradicting the most ordinary and
ancient observations. This remark alone ought to have held
Galileo back and prevented him from producing an argument better
calculated to overthrow the doctrine of the Earth's rotation
than to establish and confirm it.
On two occasions, in 1616 and 1633, the Inquisition condemned
what Galileo had written in favour of the system of Copernicus.
The hypothesis of the Earth's motion was declared falsa in
Philosophia et ad minus erronea in fide; the hypothesis of the
sun being stationary was adjudged falsa in Philosophia et
formaliter haeretica. Adopting the doctrine formulated by Tycho
Brahe in 1578, the Holy Office forbade the use of all
astronomical hypotheses that did not agree both with the
principles of Aristotelean physics, and with the letter of the
Sacred Scriptures.
XVIII. INITIAL ATTEMPTS IN CELESTIAL MECHANICS
GILBERT
KEPLER
Copernicus had endeavoured to describe accurately the motion of
each of the celestial bodies, and Galileo had striven to show
that the views of Copernicus were correct; but neither
Copernicus nor Galileo had attempted to extend to the stars,
what they knew concerning the dynamics of sublunary motions, or
to determine thereby the forces that sustain celestial motions.
They were satisfied with holding that the daily rotation of the
Earth is perpetuated by virtue of an impetus given once for all;
that the various parts of an element belonging to a star tend
towards the centre of this star by reason of a gravity peculiar
to each of the celestial bodies through which the body is
enabled to preserve its entireness. Thus, in celestial
mechanics, these two great scientists contributed scarcely
anything to what had already been taught by Buridan, Oresme, and
Nicholas of Cusa. About Galileo's time we notice the first
attempts to constitute celestial mechanics, that is to say, to
explain the motion of the stars by the aid of forces analogous
to those the effects of which we feel upon earth; the most
important of these initial attempts were made by William Gilbert
(1540-1603), and Johann Kepler (1571-1631).
To Gilbert we are indebted for an exhaustive treatise on
magnetism, in which he systematically incorporated what was
known in medieval times of electrical and magnetic phenomena,
without adding thereto anything very essential; he also gave the
result of his own valuable experiments. It was in this treatise
that he began to expound his "Magnetic Philosophy", that is to
say his celestial mechanics, but the work in which he fully
developed it was not published until 1651, long after his death.
Like Oresme and Copernicus, Gilbert maintained that in each star
there was a particular gravity through which the material parts
belonging to this star, and these only, tended to rejoin the
star when they had been separated from it. He compared this
gravity, peculiar to each star, to the action by which a piece
of iron flies towards the magnet whose nature it shares. This
opinion, held by so many of Gilbert's predecessors and adopted
by a great number of his imitators, led Francis Bacon astray.
Bacon was the enthusiastic herald of the experimental method
which, however, he never practised and of which he had an
utterly false conception. According to Gilbert, the Earth, sun,
and the stars were animated, and the animating principle of each
communicated to the body the motion of perpetual rotation. From
a distance, the sun exerted an action perpendicular to the
radius vector which goes from the centre of the sun to a planet,
and this action caused the planet to revolve around the sun just
as a horse turns the horse-mill to which it is yoked.
Kepler himself admitted that in his first attempts along the
line of celestial mechanics he was under the influence of
Nicholas of Cusa and Gilbert. Inspired by the former of these
authors, he attributed the Earth's rotation on its axis to an
impetus communicated by the Creator at the beginning of time;
but, under the influence of Gilbert's theory, he declared that
this impetus ended by being transformed into a soul or an
animating principle. In Kepler's earliest system, as in
Gilbert's, the distant sun was said to exercise over each planet
a power perpendicular to the radius vector, which power produced
the circular motion of the planet. However, Kepler had the happy
thought of submitting a universal attraction for the magnetic
attraction that Gilbert had considered peculiar to each star. He
assumed that every material mass tended towards every other
material mass, no matter to what celestial body each one of them
belonged; that a portion of matter placed between two stars
would tend towards the larger and nearer one, although it might
never have belonged to it; that, at the moment of high tide, the
waters of the sea rose towards the moon, not because they had
any special affinity for this humid star, but by virtue of the
general tendency that draws all material masses towards one
another.
In the course of numerous attempts to explain the motion of the
stars, Kepler was led to complicate his first celestial
mechanics. He assumed that all celestial bodies were plunged
into an ethereal fluid, that the rotation of the sun engendered
a vortex within this fluid the reactions of which interposed to
deflect each planet from the circular path. He also thought that
a certain power, similar to that which directs the magnetic
needle, preserved invariable in space the direction of the axis
around which the rotation of each planet is effected. The
unstable and complicated system of celestial mechanics taught by
Kepler sprang from very deficient dynamics which, on many
points, was more akin to that of the Peripatetics than to that
of the Parisians. However, these many vague hypotheses exerted
an incontestable influence on the attempts of scientists from
Kepler to Newton to determine the forces that move the stars.
If, indeed, Kepler prepared the way for Newton's work, it was
mainly by the discovery of the three admirable laws that have
immortalized his name; and, by teaching that the planets
described ellipses instead of circles he produced in astronomy a
revolution greater by far than that caused by Copernicus; he
destroyed the last time-honoured principle of ancient physics,
according to which all celestial motions were reducible to
circular motion.
XIX. CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING GEOSTATICS
The "magnetic" philosophy adopted and developed by Gilbert was
not only rejected by Kepler but badly abused in a dispute over
the principles of statics. A number of the Parisian Scholastics
of the fourteenth century, and Albert of Saxony in particular,
had accepted the principle that in every body there is a fixed,
determined point which tends to join the centre of the World,
this point being identical with the centre of gravity as
considered by Archimedes. From this principle various authors,
notably Vinci, deduced corollaries that retained a place in
statics. The Copernican revolution had modified this principle
but little, having simply substituted, for the centre of the
universe, a particular point in each star, towards which point
tended the centre of gravity of each mass belonging to this
star. Copernicus, Galileo, and Gilbert admitted the principle
thus modified, but Kepler rejected it. In 1635 Jean de Beaugrand
deduced from this principle a paradoxical theory on the gravity
of bodies, and particularly on the variation in the weight of a
body whose distance from the centre of the universe changes.
Opinions similar to those proposed by Beaugrand in his
geostatics were held in Italy by Castelli, and in France by
Pierre Fermat (1608-65). Fermat's doctrine was discussed and
refuted by Etienne Pascal (1588-1651) and Gilles Persone de
Roberval (1602-75), and the admirable controversy between these
authors and Fermat contributed in great measure to the clear
exposition of a certain number of ideas employed in statics,
amongst them, that of the centre of gravity. It was this
controversy which led Descartes to revive the question of
virtual displacements in precisely the same form as that adopted
by the School of Jordanus, in order that the essential
propositions of statics might be given a stable foundation. On
the other hand, Torricelli based all his arguments concerning
the laws of equilibrium on the axiom quoted above, viz.: a
system endowed with weight is in equilibrium when the centre of
gravity of all the bodies forming it is the lowest possible.
Cardano and perhaps Vinci had derived this proposition from the
doctrine of Albert of Saxony, but Torricelli was careful to use
it only under circumstances in which all verticals are
considered parallel to one another and, in this way he severed
all connexion between the axiom that he admitted and the
doubtful hypotheses of Parisian physics or magnetic philosophy.
Thenceforth the principles of statics were formulated with
accuracy, John Wallis (1616-1703), Pierre Varignon (1654-1722),
and Jean Bernoulli (1667-1748) having merely to complete and
develop the information provided by Stevinus, Roberval,
Descartes, and Torricelli.
XX. DESCARTES'S WORK
We have just stated what part Descartes took in the building of
statics by bringing forward the method of virtual displacements,
but his active interest in the building up of dynamics was still
more important. He clearly formulated the law of inertia as
observed by Benedetti: every moving body is inclined, if nothing
prevent it, to continue its motion in a straight line and with
constant velocity; a body cannot move in a circle unless it be
drawn towards the centre, by centripetal movement in opposition
to the centrifugal force by which this body tends to fly away
from the centre. Because of the similarity of the views held by
Deseartes and Benedetti concerning this law, we may conclude
that Descartes's discovery was influenced by that of Benedetti,
especially as Benedetti's works were known to Marin Mersenne
(1588-1648), the faithful friend and correspondent of Descartes.
Descartes connected the following truth with the law of inertia:
a weight constant in size and direction causes a uniformly
accelerated motion. Besides we have seen how, with the aid of
Descartes's principles, Gassendi was able to rectify what
Galileo had taught concerning falling bodies and the motion of
projectiles.
In statics a heavy body can very often be replaced by a material
point placed at its centre of gravity; but in dynamics the
question arises whether the motion of a body be treated as if
this body were entirely concentrated in one of these points, and
also which point this is? This question relative to the
existence and finding of a centre of impulsion had already
engrossed the attention of Vinci and after him, of Bernardino
Baldi (1553-1617). Baldi asserted that, in a body undergoing a
motion of translation, the centre of impulsion does not differ
from the centre of gravity. Now, is there a centre of impulsion
and, if so, where is it to be found in a body undergoing a
motion other than that of translation, for instance, by a
rotation around an axis? In other words, is there a simple
pendulum that moves in the same way as a given compound
pendulum? Inspired, no doubt, by reading Baldi, Mersenne laid
this problem before Roberval and Descartes, both of whom made
great efforts to solve it but became unfriendly to each other
because of the difference in their respective propositions. Of
the two, Descartes came nearer to the truth, but the dynamic
principles that he used were not sufficiently accurate to
justify his opinion in a convincing manner; the glory was
reserved to Christian Huygens.
The Jesuits, who at the College of La Fleche had been the
preceptors of Mersenne and Descartes, did not teach Peripatetic
physics in its stereotyped integrity, but Parisian physics; the
treatise that guided the instruction imparted at this
institution being represented by the "Commentaries" on
Aristotle, published by the Jesuits of Coimbra at the close of
the seventeenth century. Hence it can be understood why the
dynamics of Descartes had many points in common with the
dynamics of Buridan and the Parisians. Indeed, so close were the
relations between Parisian and Cartesian physics that certain
professors at La Fleche, such as Etienne Noel (1581-1660),
became Cartesians. Other Jesuits attempted to build up a sort of
a combination of Galilean and Cartesian mechanics with the
mechanics taught by Parisian Scholasticism, and foremost among
these men must be mentioned Honore Fabri (1606-88), a friend of
Mersenne.
In every moving body Descartes maintained the existence of a
certain power to continue its motion in the same direction and
with the same velocity and this power, which he called the
quantity of motion, he measured by estimating the product of the
mass of the moving body by the velocity that impels it. The
affinity is close between the role which Descartes attributed to
this quantity of motion, and that which Buridan ascribed to
impetus. Fabri was fully aware of this analogy and the momentum
that he discussed was at once the impetus of the Parisians, and
Descartes's quantity of motion. In statics he identified this
momentum with what Galileo called momento or impeto, and this
identification was certainly conformable to the Pisan's idea.
Fabri's synthesis was well adapted to make this truth clear,
that modern dynamics, the foundations of which were laid by
Descartes and Galileo, proceeded almost directly from the
dynamics taught during the fourteenth century in the University
of Paris.
If the special physical truths demonstrated or anticipated by
Descartes were easily traceable to the philosophy of the
fourteenth century, the principles on which the great
geometrician wished to base these truths were absolutely
incompatible with this philosophy. In fact, denying that in
reality there existed anything qualitative, Descartes insisted
that matter be reduced to extension and to the attributes of
which extension seemed to him susceptible, namely, numerical
proportions and motion; and it was by combinations of different
figures and motions that all the effects of physics could be
explained according to his liking. Therefore the power by virtue
of which a body tends to preserve the direction and velocity of
its motion is not a quality distinct from motion, such as the
impetus recognized by the scholastics; it is nothing else than
the motion itself as was taught by William of Occam at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. A body in motion and
isolated would always retain the same quantity of motion, but
there is no isolated body in a vacuum, because matter being
identical with extension, vacuum is inconceivable, as is also
compressibility. The only conceivable motions are those which
can be produced in the midst of incompressible matter, that is
to say, vortical motions confined within their own bulk.
In these motions bodies drive one another from the place they
have occupied and, in such a transmission of motion, the
quantity of motion of each of these bodies varies; however, the
entire quantity of motion of all the bodies that impinge on one
another remains constant, as God always maintains the same sum
total of motion in the world. This transmission of motion by
impact is the only action that bodies can exert over one another
and in Cartesian, as well as in Aristotelean physics, a body
cannot put another in motion unless it touch it, immediate
action at a distance being beyond conception.
There are various species of matter, differing from one another
only in the size and shape of the contiguous particles of which
they are formed. The space that extends between the different
heavenly bodies is filled with a certain subtile matter, the
very fine particles of which easily penetrate the interstices
left between the coarser constituents of other bodies. The
properties of subtile matter play an important part in all
Cartesian cosmology. The vortices in which subtile matter moves,
and the pressure generated by these vortical motions, serve to
explain all celestial phenomena. Leibniz was right in supposing
that for this part of his work Descartes had drawn largely upon
Kepler. Descartes also strove to explain, with the aid of the
figures and motions of subtile and other matter, the different
effects observable in physics, particularly the properties of
the magnet and of light. Light is identical with the pressure
which subtile matter exerts over bodies and, as subtile matter
is incompressible, light is instantly transmitted to any
distance, however great.
The suppositions by the aid of which Descartes attempted to
reduce all physical phenomena to combinations of figures and
motions had scarcely any part in the discoveries that he made in
physics; therefore the identification of light with the pressure
exerted by subtile matter plays no part in the invention of the
new truths which Descartes taught in optics. Foremost amongst
these truths is the law of the refraction of light passing from
one medium to another, although the question still remains
whether Descartes discovered this law himself, or whether, as
Huygens accused him of doing, he borrowed it from Willebrord
Snellius (1591-1626), without any mention of the real author. By
this law Descartes gave the theory of refraction through a
prism, which permitted him to measure the indices of refraction;
moreover, he greatly perfected the stud of lenses, and finally
completed the explanation of the rainbow, no progress having
been made along this line from the year 1300, when Thierry of
Freiberg had given his treatise on it. However, the reason why
the rays emerging from the drops of water are variously coloured
was no better known by Descartes than by Aristotle; it remained
for Newton to make the discovery.
XXI. PROGRESS OF EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS
Even in Descartes's work the discoveries in physics were almost
independent of Cartesianism. The knowledge of natural truths
continued to advance without the influence of this system and,
at times, even in opposition to it, although those to whom this
progress was due were often Cartesians. This advancement was
largely the result of a more frequent and skilful use of the
experimental method. The art of making logically connected
experiments and of deducing their consequences is indeed very
ancient; in a way the works produced by this art were no more
perfect than the researches of Pierre of Maricourt on the magnet
or Thierry of Freiberg on the rainbow. However, if the art
remained the same, its technic continued to improve; more
skilled workmen and more powerful processes furnishing
physicists with more intricate and better made instruments, and
thus rendering possible more delicate experiments. The rather
imperfect tests made by Galileo and Mersenne in endeavouring to
determine the specific weight of air mark the beginning of the
development of the experimental method, which was at once
vigorously pushed forward by discussions in regard to vacuum.
In Peripatetic physics the possibility of an empty space was a
logical contradiction; but, after the condemnation pronounced at
Paris in 1277 by Tempier, the existence of a vacuum ceased to be
considered absurd. It was simply taught as a fact that the
powers of nature are so constructed as to oppose the production
of an empty space. Of the various conjectures proposed
concerning the forces which prevent the appearance of a vacuum,
the most sensible and, it would seem, the most generally
received among sixteenth-century Parisians, was the following:
contiguous bodies adhere to one another, and this adhesion is
maintained by forces resembling those by which a piece of iron
adheres to the magnet which it touches. In naming this force
horror vacui, there was no intention of considering the bodies
as animate beings. A heavy piece of iron detaches itself from
the magnet that should hold it up, its weight having conquered
the force by which the magnet retained it; in the same way, the
weight of too heavy a body can prevent the horror vacui from
raising this body. This very logical corollary of the hypothesis
we have just mentioned was formulated by Galileo, who saw
therein the explanation of a fact well-known to the cistern
makers of his time; namely, that a suction-pump could not raise
water higher than thirty-two feet. This corollary entailed the
possibility of producing an empty space, a fact known to
Torricelli who, in 1644, made the celebrated experiment with
mercury that was destined to immortalize his name. However, at
the same time, he anticipated a new explanation of this
experiment; the mercury is supported in the tube not by the
horror vacui that does not exist, but by the pressure which the
heavy air exerts on the exterior surface of the basin.
Torricelli's experiment quickly attracted the attention of
physicists. In France, thanks to Mersenne, it called forth on
his part, and on that of those who had dealings with him, many
experiments in which Roberval and Pascal (1623-62) vied with
each other in ingenuity, and in order to have the resources of
technic more easily at his disposal, Pascal made his startling
experiments in a glass factory at Rouen. Among the numerous
inquirers interested in Torricelli's experiment some accepted
the explanation offered by the "column of air", and advanced by
the great Italian geometrician himself; whereas others, such as
Roberval, held to the ancient hypothesis of an attraction
analogous to magnetic action. At length, with a view to settling
the difference, an experiment was made which consisted in
measuring at what height the mercury remained suspended in
Torricelli's tube; observing it first of all at the foot of a
mountain and then at its summit. The idea of this experiment
seemed to have suggested itself to several physicists, notably
Mersenne, Descartes, and Pascal and through the instrumentality
of the last named and the courtesy of Perier, his
brother-in-law, it was made between the base and summit of
Puy-de-Dome, 19 Sept., 1648. The "Traite de l'equilibre de
liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l'air", which Pascal
subsequently composed, is justly cited as a model of the art of
logically connected experiments with deductions. Between
atomists and Cartesians there were many discussions as to
whether the upper part of Torricelli's tube was really empty or
filled with subtile matter; but these discussions bore little
fruit. However, fortunately for physics, the experimental method
so accurately followed by Torricelli, Pascal, and their rivals
continued to progress.
Otto von Guericke (1602-86) seems 'to have preceded Torricelli
in the production of an empty space, since, between 1632 and
1638, he appears to have constructed his first pneumatic
machine, with the aid of which instrument he made in 1654 the
celebrated Magdeburg experiments, published in 1657 by his
friend Caspar Schoot, S.J. (1608-60). Informed by Schoot of
Guericke's researches, Robert Boyle (1627-91) perfected the
pneumatic machine and, assisted by Richard Townley, his pupil,
pursued the experiments that made known the law of the
compressibility of perfect gases. In France these experiments
were taken up and followed by Mariotte (1620-84). The use of the
dilatation of a fluid for showing the changes of temperature was
already known to Galileo, but it is uncertain whether the
thermoscope was invented by Galileo or by some one of the
numerous physicists to whom the priority is attributed, among
these being Santorio, called Sanetorius (1560-1636), Fra Paolo
Sarpi (1552-1623), Cornelis van Drebbel (1572-1634), and Robert
Fludd (1574-1637). Although the various thermoscopes for air or
liquid used in the very beginning admitted of only arbitrary
graduation, they nevertheless served to indicate the constancy
of the temperature or the direction of its variations, and
consequently contributed to the discovery of a number of the
laws of physics. Hence this apparatus was used in the Accademia
del Cimento, opened at Florence 19 June, 1657, and devoted to
the study of experimental physics. To the members of this
academy we are especially indebted for the demonstration of the
constancy of the point of fusion of ice and of the absorption of
heat accompanying this fusion. Observations of this kind, made
by means of the thermoscope, created an ardent desire for the
transformation of this apparatus into a thermometer, by the aid
of a definite graduation so arranged that everywhere instruments
could be made which would be comparable with one another. This
problem, one of the most important in physics, was not solved
until 1702 when Guillaume Amontons (1663-1705) worked it out in
the most remarkable manner. Amontons took as a starting-point
these two laws, discovered or verified by him the boiling point
of water under atmospheric pressure is constant. The pressures
sustained by any two masses of air, heated in the same way in
any two constant volumes, have a relation independent of the
temperature. These two laws enabled Amontons to use the air
thermometer under constant volume and to graduate it in such a
way that it gave what we to-day call absolute temperature. Of
all the definitions of the degree of temperature given since
Amontons's time, he, at the first stroke, found the most
perfect. Equipped with instruments capable of measuring pressure
and registering temperature, experimental physics could not but
make rapid progress, this being still further augmented by
reason of the interest shown by the learned societies that had
been recently founded. The Accademia del Cimento was
discontinued in 1667, but the Royal Society of London had begun
its sessions in 1663 and the Academie des Sciences at Paris was
founded or rather organized by Colbert in 1666. These different
academies immediately became the enthusiastic centres of
scientific research in regard to natural phenomena.
XXII. UNDULATORY THEORY OF LIGHT
It was to the Academie des Sciences of Paris that, in 1678,
Christian Huygens (1629-95) presented his "Treatise on Light".
According to the Cartesian system, light was instantly
transmitted to any distance through the medium of incompressible
subtile matter. Deseartes did not hesitate to assure Fermat that
his entire philosophy would give way as soon as it should be
demonstrated that light is propagated with a limited velocity.
In 1675 Ole Roemer (1644-1710), the Danish astronomer, announced
to the Academie des Sciences the extent of the considerable but
finite velocity with which light traverses the space that
separates the planets from one another, the study of the
eclipses of Jupiter's satellites having brought him to this
conclusion. Descartes's optical theory was destroyed, and
Huygens undertook to build up a new theory of light. He was
constantly guided by the supposition that, in the midst of
compressible ether, substituted for incompressible subtile
matter, light is propagated by waves exactly similar to those
which transmit sound through a gaseous medium. This comparison
led him to an explanation, which is still the standard one, of
the laws of reflection and refraction. In this explanation the
index of the refraction of light passing from one medium to
another equals the ratio of the velocity of propagation in the
first medium to the velocity of propagation in the second. In
1850 this fundamental law was confirmed by Foucault's
experiments.
However, Huygens did not stop here. In 1669 Erasmus Berthelsen,
known as Bartholinus (1625-98), discovered the double refraction
of Iceland spar. By a generalization, as ingenious as it was
daring, of the theory he had given for non-crystallized media,
Huygens succeeded in tracing the form of the surface of a
luminous wave inside of a crystal such as spar or quartz, and in
defining the apparently complex laws of the double refraction of
light in the interior of these crystals. At the same time, he
called attention to the phenomena of polarization which
accompany this double refraction; he was, however, unable to
draw from his optical theory the explanation of these effects.
The comparison between light and sound caused Malebranche
(1638-1715) to make some very effective conjectures in 1699. He
assumed that light is a vibratory motion analogous to that
produced by sound; the greater or less amplitude of this motion,
as the case may be, generates a greater or less intensity but,
whilst in sound each period corresponds to a particular note, in
light it corresponds to a particular colour. Through this
analogy Malebranche arrived at the idea of monochromatic light,
which Newton was to deduce from admirably conducted experiments;
moreover, he established between simple colour and the period of
the vibration of light, the connexion that was to be preserved
in the optics of Young and Fresnel.
XXIII. DEVELOPMENTS OF DYNAMICS
Both Cartesians and atomists maintained that impact was the only
process by which bodies could put one another in motion; hence,
to Cartesians and atomists, the theory of impact seemed like the
first chapter of rational physics. This theory had already
enlisted the attention of Galileo, Marcus Marci (1639), and
Descartes when, in 1668, the Royal Society of London proposed it
as the subject of a competition and, of the three important
memoirs submitted to the criticism of this society by John
Wallis, Christopher Wren (1632-1723), and Huygens, the last is
the only one that we can consider. In his treatise Huygens
adopted the following principle: if a material body, subject
merely to the action of gravity, starts from a certain position,
with initial velocity equal to zero, the centre of gravity of
this body can at no time rise higher than it was at the outset
of the motion. Huygens justified this principle by observing
that, if it were false, perpetual motion would be possible. To
find the origin of this axiom it would be necessary to go back
to "De Subtilitate" by Cardano, who had probably drawn it from
the notes of Vinci; the proposition on which Torricelli had
based his statics was a corollary from this postulate. By
maintaining the accuracy of this postulate, even in the case
where parts of the system clash; by combining it with the law of
the accelerated fall of bodies, taken from Galileo's works, and
with another postulate on the relativity of motion, Huygens
arrived at the law of the impact of hard bodies. He showed that
the quantity the value of which remains constant in spite of
this impact is not, as Descartes declared, the total quantity of
motion, but that which Leibniz called the quantity of vis viva
(living force).
The axiom that had so happily served Huygens in the study of the
impact of bodies he now extended to a body oscillating around a
horizontal axis and his "Horologium oscillatorium", which
appeared in 1673, solved in the most elegant and complete manner
the problem of the centres of oscillation previously handled by
Descartes and Roberval. That Huygens's axiom was the subversion
of Cartesian dynamics was shown by Leibniz in 1686. If, like
Descartes, we measure the efficiency of a force by the work that
it does, and if, moreover, we admit Huygens's axiom and the law
of falling bodies, we find that this efficiency is not measured
by the increase in the quantity of motion of the moving body,
but by the increase in half the product of the mass of the
moving body and the square of its velocity. It was this product
that Leibniz called vis viva. Huygens's "Horologium
oscillatorium" not only gave the solution of the problem of the
centre of oscillation but likewise a statement of the laws
which, in circular motion, govern the magnitude of centrifugal
force, and thus it was that the eminent physicist prepared the
way for Newton, the lawgiver of dynamics.
XXIV. NEWTON'S WORK
Most of the great dynamical truths had been discovered between
the time of Galileo and Descartes, and that of Huygens and
Leibniz. The science of dynamics required a Euclid who would
organize it as geometry had been organized, and this Euclid
appeared in the person of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) who, in his
"Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica", published in
1687, succeeded in deducing the entire science of motion from
three postulates: inertia; the independence of the effects of
previously acquired forces and motions; and the equality of
action and reaction. Had Newton's "Principia" contained nothing
more than this co-ordination of dynamics into a logical system,
they would nevertheless have been one of the most important
works ever written; but, in addition, they gave the grandest
possible application of this dynamics in utilizing it for the
establishment of celestial mechanics. In fact, Newton succeeded
in showing that the laws of bodies falling to the surface of the
earth, the laws that preside over the motion of planets around
the sun, and of satellites around the planets which they
accompany, finally, the laws that govern the form of the Earth
and of the other stars, as also the high and low tides of the
sea, are but so many corollaries from this unique hypothesis:
two bodies, whatever their origin or nature, exert over each
other an attraction proportional to the product of their masses
and in inverse ratio to the square of the distance that
separates them.
The dominating principle of ancient physics declared the
essential distinction between the laws that directed the motions
of the stars -- beings exempt from generation, change, and death
-- and the laws presiding over the motions of sublunary bodies
subject to generation and corruption. From the birth of
Christian physics and especially from the end of the thirteenth
century, physicists had been endeavouring to destroy the
authority of this principle and to render the celestial and
sublunary worlds subject to the same laws, the doctrine of
universal gravitation being the outcome of this prolonged
effort. In proportion as the time approached, when Newton was to
produce his system, attempts at cosmology were multiplied, so
many forerunners, as it were, of this discovery. When in 1672
Guericke again took up Kepler's celestial mechanics, he made but
one correction therein, which unfortunately caused the
disappearance of the only proposition by which this work led up
to Newton's discoveries. Kepler had maintained that two material
masses of any kind attract each other, but, in imitation of
Copernicus, Gilbert, and Galileo, Guerieke limited this mutual
attraction to parts of the same star, so that, far from being
attracted by the Earth, portions of the moon would be repelled
by the Earth if placed upon its surface. But, in 1644, under the
pseudonym of Aristarchus of Samos, Roberval published a system
of celestial mechanics, in which the attraction was perhaps
mutual between two masses of no matter what kind; in which, at
all events, the Earth and Jupiter attracted their satellites
with a power identical with the gravity with which they endow
their own fragments. In 1665, on the pretence of explaining the
motions of Jupiter's satellites, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli
(1608-79) tried to advance a theory which simultaneously
comprised the motions of the planets around the sun and of the
satellites around the planets. He was the first of modern
scientists (Plutarch having preceded him) to hold the opinion
that the attraction which causes a planet to tend towards the
sun and a satellite to tend towards the star which it
accompanies, is in equilibrium with the centrifugal force
produced by the circular motion of the planet or satellite in
question. In 1674 Robert Hooke (1635-1702) formulated the same
idea with great precision. Having already supposed the
attraction of two masses to vary inversely as the square of
their distance, he was in possession of the fundamental
hypotheses of the theory of universal gravitation, which
hypotheses were held by Wren about the same time. However,
neither of these scientists was able to deduce therefrom
celestial mechanics, as both were still unacquainted with the
laws of centrifugal force, published just at this time by
Huygens. In 1684 Edmund Halley (1656-1742) strove to combine
Huygens's theories with Hooke's hypotheses, but, before his work
was finished, Newton presented his "Principia" to the Royal
Society, having for twenty years silently pursued his
meditations on the system of the world. Halley, who could not
forestall Newton, had the glory of broadening the domain of
universal gravitation by making it include comets (1705).
Not satisfied with creating celestial mechanics, Newton also
contributed largely to the progress of optics. From ancient
times the colouring of the spectrum, produced by the passage of
white light through a glass prism, had elicited the wonder of
observers and appealed to the acumen of physicists without,
however, being satisfactorily explained. Finally, a complete
explanation was given by Newton who, in creating a theory of
colours, accomplished what all the philosophers from Aristotle
down had laboured in vain to achieve. The theory advanced by the
English physicist agreed with that proposed by Malebranche at
the same time. However, Malebranehe's theory was nothing more
than a hypothesis suggested by the analogy between light and
sound, whereas Newton's explanation was drawn from experiments,
as simple as they were ingenious, its exposition by the author
being one of the most beautiful examples of experimental
induction. Unfortunately Newton disregarded this analogy between
sound and light that had furnished Huygens and Malebranche with
such fruitful discoveries. Newton's opinion was to the effect
that light is formed of infinitely small projectiles thrown off
with extreme velocity by incandescent bodies. The particles of
the medium in which these projectiles move exert over them an
attraction similar to universal attraction; however, this new
attraction does not vary inversely as the square of the distance
but according to another function of the distance, and in such a
way that it exercises a very great power between a material
particle and a luminous corpuscle that are contiguous.
Nevertheless this attraction becomes altogether insensible as
soon as the two masses between which it operates are separated
from each other by a perceptible interval.
This action exerted by the particles of a medium on the luminous
corpuscles pervading them changes the velocity with which these
bodies move and the direction which they follow at the moment of
passing from one medium to another; hence the phenomenon of
refraction. The index of refraction is the ratio of the velocity
of light in the medium which it enters, to the velocity it had
in the medium which it leaves. Now, as the index of refraction
so understood was precisely the reverse of that attributed to it
by Huygens's theory, in 1850 Foucault submitted both to the test
of experiment, with the result that Newton's theory of emission
was condemned. Newton explained the experimental laws that
govern the colouring of thin laminae, such as soap bubbles, and
succeeded in compelling these colours, by suitable forms of
these thin laminae, to assume the regular order known as
"Newton's Rings". To explain this phenomenon he conceived that
luminous projectiles have a form that may, at the surface of
contact of two media, either pass easily or be easily reflected,
according to the manner of their presentation at the moment of
passage; a rotary motion causes them to pass alternately by
"fits of easy transmission or of easy reflection".
Newton thought that he had accounted for the principal optical
phenomena by supposing that, besides this universal attraction,
there existed an attraction, sensible only at a very short
distance, exerted by the particles of bodies on luminous
corpuscles, and naturally he came to believe that these two
kinds of attraction would suffice to explain all physical
phenomena. Action extending to a considerable distance, such as
electric and magnetic action, must follow laws analogous to
those which govern universal gravity; on the other hand, the
effects of capillarity and cohesion, chemical decomposition and
reaction must depend on molecular attraction extending only to
extremely small distances and similar to that exerted over
luminous corpuscles. This comprehensive hypothesis proposed by
Newton in a "question" placed at the end of the second edition
of his "Optics" (1717) gave a sort of outline of the programme
which eighteenth-century physics was to attempt to carry out.
XXV. PROGRESS OF GENERAL AND CELESTIAL MECHANICS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
This programme made three demands: first, that general mechanics
and celestial mechanics advance in the way indicated by Newton;
secondly, that electric and magnetic phenomena be explained by a
theory analogous to that of universal gravitation; thirdly, that
molecular attraction furnish the detailed explanations of the
various changes investigated by physics and chemistry.
Many followed in the path outlined by Newton and tried to extend
the domain of general and celestial mechanics, but there were
three who seem to have surpassed all the others: Alexis-Claude
Clairaut (1713-65), Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717-83),
and Leonhard Euler (1707-83). The progress which, thanks to
these three able men, was made in general mechanics, may be
summed up as follows: In 1743, by his principle of the
equilibrium of channels, which was easily connected with the
principle of virtual displacements, Clairaut obtained the
general equations of the equilibrium of liquids. In the same
year d'Alembert formulated a rule whereby all problems of motion
were reduced to problems of equilibrium and, in 1744, applied
this rule to the equation of hydrostatics given by Clairaut and
arrived at the equations of hydrodynamics. Euler transformed
these equations and, in his studies on the motion of liquids,
was enabled to obtain results no less important than those which
he had obtained by analysing the motion of solids. Clairaut
extended the consequences of universal attraction in all
directions, and, in 1743, the equations of hydrostatics that he
had established enabled him to perfect the theory of the figure
of the earth. In 1752 he published his theory of lunar
inequalities, which he had at first despaired of accounting for
by Newton's principles. The methods that he devised for the
study of the perturbations which the planets produce on the path
of a star permitted him, in 1758, to announce with accuracy the
time of the return of Halley's Comet. The confirmation of this
prediction in which Clairaut had received assistance from
Lalande (1732-1807) and Mme. Lepaute, both able mathematicians,
placed beyond doubt the applicability of Newton's hypotheses to
comets.
Great as were Clairaut's achievements in perfecting the system
of universal attraction, they were not as important as those of
d'Alembert. Newton could not deduce from his suppositions a
satisfactory theory of the precession of the equinoxes, and this
failure marred the harmony of the doctrine of universal
gravitation. In 1749 d'Alembert deduced from the hypothesis of
gravitation the explanation of the precession of the equinoxes
and of the nutation of the earth's axis; and soon afterwards
Euler, drawing upon the admirable resources of his mathematical
genius, made still further improvements on d'Alembert's
discovery. Clairaut, d'Alembert, and Euler were the most
brilliant stars in an entire constellation of mechanical
theorists and astronomers, and to this group there succeeded
another, in which shone two men of surpassing intellectuality,
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) and Pierre-Simon Laplace
(1749-1827). Laplace was said to have been born to complete
celestial mechanics, if, indeed, it were in the nature of a
science to admit of completion; and quite as much could be said
of Lagrange with regard to general mechanics. In 1787 Lagrange
published the first edition of his "Mecanique analytique"; the
second, which was greatly enlarged, was published after the
author's death. Laplace s "Mecanique celeste" was published from
1799 to 1805, and both of these works give an account of the
greater part of the mechanical conquests made in the course of
the eighteenth century, with the assistance of the principles
that Newton had assigned to general mechanics and the laws that
he had imposed upon universal gravitation. However exhaustive
and effective these two treatises are, they do not by any means
include all the discoveries in general and celestial mechanics
for which we are indebted to their authors. To do Lagrange even
meagre justice his able researches should be placed on a par
with his "Mecanique analytique"; and our idea of Laplace's work
would be very incomplete were we to omit the grand cosmogonic
hypothesis with which, in 1796, he crowned his "Exposition du
systeme du monde". In developing this hypothesis the illustrious
geometrician was unaware that in 1755 Kant had expressed similar
suppositions which were marred by serious errors in dynamic
theories.
XXVI. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE THEORY OF ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM
For a long time the study of electric action was merely
superficial and, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it
was still in the condition in which Thales of Miletus had left
it, remaining far from the point to which the study of magnetic
attraction and repulsion had been carried in the time of Pierre
of Maricourt. When, in 1733 and 1734, Charles-Franc,ois de
Cisternay du Fay distinguished two kinds of electricity,
resinous and vitreous, and when he proved that bodies charged
with the same kind of electricity repel one another, whereas
those charged with different kinds attract one another,
electrical science was brought up to the level that magnetic
science had long before attained, and thenceforth these two
sciences, united by the closest analogy, progressed side by
side. They advanced rapidly as, in the eighteenth century, the
study of electrical phenomena became a popular craze. Physicists
were not the only ones devoted to it; men of the world crowded
the salons where popularizers of the science, such as the Abbe
Nollet (1700-70), enlisted as votaries dandified marquesses and
sprightly marchionesses. Numberless experimentalists applied
themselves to multiplying observations on electricity and
magnetism, but we shall restrict ourselves to mentioning
Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) who, by his logically-conducted
researches, contributed more than any other man to the formation
of the theories of electricity and magnetism. The researches of
Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) deserve to be placed in the same
rank as Franklin's, though they were but little known before his
death.
By means of Franklin's experiments and his own, AEpinus (Franz
Ulrich Theodor Hoch, 1724-1802) was the first to attempt to
solve the problem suggested by Newton and, by the hypothesis of
attractive and repellent forces, to explain the distribution of
electricity and magnetism over the bodies which they affect. His
researches could not be pushed very far, as it was still unknown
that these forces depend upon the distance at which they are
exerted. Moreover, AEpinus succeeded in drawing still closer the
connexion already established between the sciences of
electricity and magnetism, by showing the polarization of each
of the elements of the insulating plate which separates the two
collecting plates of the condenser. The experiment he made in
this line in 1759 was destined to suggest to Coulomb the
experiment of the broken magnets and the theory of magnetic
polarization, which is the foundation of the study of magnets;
and was also to be the starting-point of an entire branch of
electrical science, namely the study of dielectric bodies, which
study was developed in the nineteenth century by Michael Faraday
and James Clerk-Maxwell.
Their analogy to the fertile law of universal gravitation
undoubtedly led physicists to suppose that electrical and
magnetic forces vary inversely as the square of the distance
that separates the acting elements; but, so far, this opinion
had not been confirmed by experiment. However, in 1780 it
received this confirmation from Charles-Augustin de Coulomb with
the aid of the torsion balance. By the use of this balance and
the proof plane, he was enabled to make detailed experiments on
the subject of the distribution of electricity over conductive
bodies, no such tests having been previously made. Although
Coulomb's experiments placed beyond doubt the elementary laws of
electricity and magnetism, it still remained to be established
by mathematical analysis how electricity was distributed over
the surface of conductive bodies of given shape, and how a piece
of soft iron was magnetized under given circumstances. The
solution of these problems was attempted by Coulomb and also in
1787 by Hauey (q. v.), but neither of these two savants pushed
his tests very far. The establishment of principles which would
permit of an analysis of the distribution of electricity on
conductors, and of magnetism on soft iron, required the genius
of Simon-Denis Poisson (1781-1840).
In 1812 Poisson showed how the investigation of the distribution
of electricity in equilibrium on conductors belonged to the
domaln of analysis, and he gave a complete solution of this
problem in the case of two conductive spheres influencing each
other, whether placed at given distances or in contact.
Coulomb's experiments in connexion with contiguous spheres
established the truth of Poisson's theory. In 1824 Poisson
established on the subject of hollow conductors limited either
interiorly or exteriorly by a spherical cavity, theorems which,
in 1828, were extended by George Green (1793-1841) to all kinds
of hollow conductors and which Faraday was subsequently to
confirm through experimentation. Between 1813 and 1824 Poisson
took up the study of magnetic forces and magnetization by
impulsion and, in spite of a few inaccuracies which the future
was to correct, the formulae which he established remain at the
basis of all the research of which magnetism has meanwhile been
the object. Thanks to Poisson's memoirs, the theory of the
forces exercised in inverse ratio to the square of the distance,
by annexing the domain of static electricity and magnetism,
markedly enlarged the field which at first included only
celestial mechanics. The study of the action of the electric
current was to open up to this theory a new and fertile
territory.
The discoveries of Aloisio Galvani (1737-98) and Alessandro
Volta (1745-1827) enriched physics with the voltaic battery. It
would be impossible to enumerate, even briefly, the researches
occasioned by this discovery. All physicists have compared the
conductor, the seat of a current, to a space in which a fluid
circulates. In his works on hydrodynamics Euler had established
general formulae which apply to the motion of all fluids and,
imitating Euler's method, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier
(1768-1830) began the study of the circulation of heat-then
considered a fluid and called caloric-within conductive bodies.
The mathematical laws to which he had recourse once more showed
the extreme importance of the mathematical methods inaugurated
by Lagrange and Laplace in the study of universal attraction,
and at the same time extended by Poisson to the study of
electrostatics. In order to treat mathematically of the
circulation of electric fluid in the interior of conductive
bodies, it sufficed to take up Fourier's analysis almost
textually, substituting the word electricity for the word heat,
this being done in 1827 by Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854).
Meanwhile on 21 July, 1820, Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851)
had discovered the action of the electric current on the
magnetic needle. To this discovery Andre-Marie Ampere
(1775-1836) added that of the action exerted over each other by
two conductors carrying electric currents and, to the study of
electro-dynamic and electro-magnetic forces, he applied a method
similar to that used by Newton when studying universal
attraction. In 1826 Ampere gave the complete theory of all these
forces in his "Memoire sur la theorie mathematique des
phenomenes electro-dynamiques uniquement deduite de
l'experience", a work that can stand the test of comparison with
the "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica" and not be
found wanting.
Not wishing to carry the history of electricity and magnetism
beyond this date, we shall content ourselves with making another
comparison between the two works we have just mentioned. As
Newton's treatise brought about numerous discoveries on the part
of his successors, Ampere's memoir gave the initial impetus to
researches which have greatly broadened the field of
electro-dynamics and electro-magnetism. Michael Faraday
(1791-1867), an experimentalist whose activity, skill, and good
fortune have perhaps never been equalled, established in 1831
the experimental laws of electro-dynamic and electro-magnetic
induction, and, between 1845 and 1847, Franz Ernst Neumann
(1798-1895) and Wilhelm Weber (1804-91), by closely following
Ampere's method of studying electro-dynamic force, finally
established the mathematical theory of these phenomena of
induction. Michael Faraday was opposed to Newtonian doctrines,
and highly disapproved the theory of action at a distance; in
fact, when he applied himself to analysing the polarization of
insulated media, which he called dielectrics, he hoped to
eliminate the hypothesis of such action. Meantime by extending
to dielectric bodies the formulae that Poisson, Ampere, and
Neumann had established for magnets and conductive bodies, James
Clerk-Maxwell (1831-79) was enabled to create a new branch of
electro-dynamics, and thereby bring to light the long-sought
link connecting the sciences of electricity and optics. This
wonderful discovery was not one of the least important conquests
of the method defined and practised by Newton.
XXVII. MOLECULAR ATTRACTION
While universal attraction, which varies proportionally as the
product of the masses and inversely as the square of the
distance, was being established throughout the science of
astronomy, and while, thanks to the study of other forces also
varying inversely as the square of the distance, electricity and
magnetism were being organized, other parts of physics received
no less light from another Newtonian hypothesis, namely, the
supposition that, between two material particles, there is an
attraction distinct from universal attraction and extremely
powerful, while the two particles are contiguous, but ceasing to
be appreciable as soon as the two masses which it acts upon are
separated by a sensible distance. Among the phenomena to be
explained by such attractions, Newton had already signalized the
effect of capillarity in connexion with which Francis Hauksbee
(d. 1705) had made interesting experiments. In 1718 James Jurin
(1684-1750) tried to follow Newton's idea but without any marked
success, and it was Clairaut who, in 1743, showed how
hydrostatic methods permitted the application of this idea to
the explanation of capillary phenomena. Unfortunately his able
reasoning led to no important result, as he had ascribed too
great a value to the extent of molecular action.
Chemical action also was one of the actions which Newton made
subject to molecular attraction, and John Keill (1671-1721),
John Freind (1675-1728), and Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-84)
believed in the fruitfulness of this Newtonian opinion. The
hypothesis of molecular attraction proved a great annoyance to a
man whose scientific mediocrity had not prevented him from
acquiring great influence, we mean Georges-Louis-Leclerc de
Buffon (1707-88). Incapable of understanding that an attraction
could be other than inversely proportional to the square of the
distance, Buffon entered into a discussion of the subject with
Clairaut, and fondly imagined that he had triumphed over the
modest learning of his opponent. Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich,
S.J. (1711-87), published a detailed exposition of the views
attacked by Buffon and defended by Clairaut, and, inspired alike
by the opinions of Newton and Leibniz, he conceived a cosmology
in which the universe is composed solely of material points,
these being attracted to each other in pairs. When these points
are separated by a sensible distance, their attraction is
reduced to mere universal attraction, whereas when they are in
very close proximity it assumes a dominant importance.
Boscovich's cosmology provided physical theory with a programme
which the geometricians of the eighteenth century, and of a
great portion of the nineteenth, laboured assiduously to carry
out.
The efforts of Johann Andreas von Segner (1704-77), and
subsequently of Thomas Young (1773-1829) again drew attention to
capillary phenomena, and with the assistance of the hypothesis
of molecular attraction, as also of Clairaut's method Laplace
advanced in 1806 and 1807 an admirable theory which Karl
Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) improved in 1829. Being a
thoroughly-convinced partisan of Boscovich's cosmological
doctrine, Laplace communicated his convictions to numerous
geometricians, who surrendered to the ascendency of his genius;
we shall only mention Claude-Louis-Marie Navier (1785-1836),
Poisson, and Augustin Cauchy (1789-1857). In developing the
consequences of the hypothesis of molecular attraction Navier,
Poisson, and Cauchy succeeded in building up the theory of the
equilibrium and small motions of elastic bodies, one of the
finest and most fruitful theories of modern physics. The
discredit into which the progress of present-day thermodynamics
has brought Boscovich's cosmology has, however, affected
scarcely anything of what Laplace, Gauss, Navier, Poisson,
Cauchy, and many others have deduced from the principles of this
cosmology. The theories which they established have always been
readily justified with the assistance of new methods, the way of
bringing about this justification having been indicated by
Cauchy himself and George Green. After Macquer, many chemists
used the hypothesis of molecular attraction in an attempt to
disentangle the laws of reaction which they studied, and among
these scientists we may mention Torbern Bergman (1735-1784), and
above all Claude-Louis Berthollet (1784-1822). When the latter
published his "Statique chimique" in 1803, he believed that the
science of chemical equilibria, subject at last to Newton's
method, had found its true direction; however, it was not to
enter upon this direction until much later on, when it would be
guided by precepts altogether different and which were to be
formulated by thermodynamics.
XXVIII. REVIVAL OF THE UNDULATORY THEORY OF LIGHT
The emission theory of light not only led Newton to conceive the
hypothesis of molecular attraction, but seemed to provide this
hypothesis with an opportunity for further success by permitting
Laplace to find, in the emission system, the laws of the double
refraction of Iceland spar, which laws Huygens had discovered by
the use of the undulatory theory. In this way Newton's optics
appeared to rob Huygens's optics of the one advantage in which
it glorified. However, at the very moment that Laplace's
discovery seemed to ensure the triumph of the emission system,
the undulatory theory carried off new and dazzling victories,
won mainly through the efforts of Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean
Fresnel (1788-1827). Between 1801 and 1803 Young made the
memorable discoveries which provoked this revival of undulatory
optics. The comparison of the ether that vibrates in a ray of
light to the air that vibrates in a resonant tube led him to
explain the alternately light and dark fringes that show in a
place illumined by two equal beams slightly inclined to each
other. The principle of interference, thus justified, allowed
him to connect with the undulatory theory the explanation of the
colours of thin laminae that Newton had demanded of the "fits of
easy transmission and easy reflection" of the particles of
light.
In 1815 Fresnel, who combined this principle of interference
with the methods devised by Huygens, took up the theory of the
phenomena of diffraction which had been discovered by Francesco
Maria Grimaldi, S.J. (1618-63), and had remained a mystery to
opticians. Fresnel's attempts at explaining these phenomena led
him to draw up in 1818 a memoir which in a marked degree
revealed the essential character of his genius, namely, a
strange power of divination exercised independently of all rules
of deductive reasoning. Despite the irregularity of his
procedure, Fresnel made known very complicated formulae, the
most minute details of which were verified by experiment, and
long afterwards justified according to the logical method of
mathematicians. Never did physicist conquer more important and
more unthought-of truths, and yet never was there employed a
method more capable of leading the common mind into error. Up to
this time the vibrations of ether in a ray of light had been
supposed to be longitudinal, as it is in the air of a resonant
tube, but in 1808 Etienne-Louis Malus (1775-1812) discovered the
polarization of light when reflected on glass, and, in 1817,
when studying this phenomenon, Young was led to suppose that
luminous vibrations are perpendicular to the ray which transmits
them. Fresnel, who had conceived the same idea, completed an
experiment (1816) in collaboration with Arago (1786-1853), which
proved the view that luminous vibrations are transverse to the
direction of propagation.
The hypothesis of transverse vibrations was, for Fresnel, the
key to all the secrets of optics, and from the day that he
adopted it he made discoveries with great rapidity. Among these
discoveries were:
(a) The complete theory of the phenomena of polarization
accompanying the reflection or refraction of light on the
surface of contact of two isotropic media. The peculiarities
which accompany total reflection gave Fresnel an opportunity to
display in a most striking manner his strange power of
divination and thus throw out a veritable challenge to logic.
This divination was no less efficient in the second discovery.
(b) In studying double refraction, Huygens limited himself to
determining the direction of luminous rays in the interior of
crystals now called uniaxial, without, however, being able to
account for the polarization of these rays; but with the aid of
the wave-surface, Fresnel succeeded in giving the most elegant
form to the law of the refraction of rays in biaxial crystals,
and in formulating rules by which rays polarize in the interior
of all crystals, uniaxial as well as biaxial.
Although all these wonderful theories destroyed the theory of
emission, the hypothesis of molecular attraction was far from
losing ground. In fact Fresnel thought he could find in the
elasticity of the ether, which transmits luminous vibrations,
the explanation of all the optical laws that he had verified by
experiment, and he sought the explanation of this elasticity and
its laws in the attraction which he believed to exist between
the contiguous particles of this fluid. Being too little of a
mathematician and too little of a mechanician to go very far in
the analysis of such a problem, he left its solution to his
successors. To this task, so clearly defined by Fresnel, Cauchy
devoted the most powerful efforts of his genius as an algebraist
and, thanks to this pupil of Laplace, the Newtonian physics of
molecular attraction became an active factor in the propagation
of the theory of undulatory optics. Fresnel's discoveries did
not please all Newtonians as much as they did Cauchy. Arago
could never admit that luminous vibrations were transverse,
notwithstanding that he had collaborated with Fresnel in making
the experiment by which this point was verified, and
Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774-1862), whose experimental researches
were numerous and skilful, and who had furnished recent optics
with very valuable matter, remained strongly attached to the
system of emission by which he endeavoured to explain all the
phenomena that Fresnel had discovered and explained by the
undulatory system. Moreover, Biot would not acknowledge himself
defeated, or regard the system of emission as condemned until
Foucault (1819-68) proved that light is propagated much more
quickly in air than in water.
XXIX. THEORIES OF HEAT
The idea of the quantity of heat and the invention of the
calorimeter intended for measuring the amount of heat emitted or
absorbed by a body under given circumstances are due to Joseph
Black (1728-99) and Adair Crawford (1749-95), who, by joining
calorimetry with thermometry, veritably created the science of
heat, which science remained unborn as long as the only thing
done was the comparison of temperatures. Like Descartes, Newton
held that heat consisted in a very lively agitation of the
smallest parts of which bodies are composed. By showing that a
certain quantity of heat is furnished to ice which melts,
without however raising the temperature of the ice, that this
heat remains in a "latent state" in the water resulting from the
melting and that it again becomes manifest when the water
returns to ice, the experiments of Black and Crawford led
physicists to change their opinion concerning the nature of
heat. In it they beheld a certain fluid which combines with
other matter when heat passes into the latent state, and
separates from it when heat is liberated again, and, in the new
nomenclature that perpetuated the revolution brought about by
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), this imponderable fluid was
assigned a place among simple bodies and named caloric.
Air becomes heated when it is compressed, and cools again when
rarefied under the receiver of the pneumatic machine. Johann
Heinrich Lambert (1728-77), Horace de Saussure (1740-79), and
John Dalton (1766-1844) recognized the importance of this
already old experiment, but it is to Laplace that we are
indebted for a complete explanation of this phenomenon. The
experiment proved to Laplace that, at a given temperature, a
mass of air contains a quantity of caloric proportional to its
volume. If we admit the accuracy of the law of compressibility
enunciated by Boyle and Mariotte, this quantity of heat combined
with a given mass of air, also of given temperature, is
proportional to the volume of this air. In 1803 Laplace
formulated these propositions in a short note inserted in
Berthollet's "Statique chimique". In order to verify the
consequences which Laplace deduced therefrom concerning the
expansion of gases, Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) began
researches on this subject, and in 1807 on the variations of
temperature produced when a gas contained in a receiver enters
another receiver previously empty.
Laplace's views entail an evident corollary; to raise to a
certain number of degrees the temperature of a gas of a fixed
volume, the communication of less heat is required than if this
gas were expanded under an invariable pressure. Hence a gas
admits of two distinct kinds of specific heat which depend on
whether it is heated at constant volume or under constant
pressure; the specific heat being greater in the latter case
than in the former. Through these remarks the study of the
specific heat of gases was signalized as one of the most
important in which experimenters could engage. The Institute
made this study the subject of a competition which called forth
two notable memoirs, one by Delaroche and Berard on the
measurement of the specific heats of various gases under
constant pressure; and the other by Desormes and Clement,
published in 1812, on the determination of the increase of heat
due to a given compression in a given mass of air. The
experiments of Desormes and Clement enabled Laplace to deduce,
in the case of air, the ratio of specific heat under constant
pressure to specific heat under constant volume, and hence to
test the ideas he had formed on the propagation of sound. In
applying to air the law of compressibility discovered by Boyle,
Newton had attempted to calculate the velocity of the
propagation of sound in this fluid, and the formula which he had
established gave values very inferior to those furnished by
experimental determination. Lagrange had already shown that, by
modifying Boyle s law of compressibility, this disagreement
could be overcome; however, the modification was to be justified
not by what Lagrange said but by what Laplace discovered. When
sound is propagated in air by alternate condensations and
rarefactions, the temperature at each point instead of remaining
unchanged, as Boyle's law supposed, is alternately raised and
lowered about a mean value. Hence velocity of sound was no
longer expressed by the formula Newton had proposed; this
expression had to be multiplied by the square root of the ratio
of specific heat under constant pressure to specific heat under
constant volume. Laplace had this thought in mind in 1803
(Berthollet, "Statique chimique"); its consequences being
developed in 1807 by Poisson, his disciple. In 1816 Laplace
published his new formula; fresh experiments by Desormes and
Clement, and analogous experiments by Gay-Lussac and Welter gave
him tolerably exact values of the relation of the specific heats
of gases. Henceforth the great geometrician could compare the
result given by his formula with that furnished by the direct
determination of the velocity of sound, the latter, in metres
per second, being represented by the number 340-889, and the
former by the number 337 715. This agreement seemed a very
strong confirmation of the hypothesis of caloric and the theory
of molecular action, to both of which it was attributable. It
would appear that Laplace had a right to say: "The phenomena of
the expansion of heat and vibration of gases lead back to the
attractive and repellent forces sensible only at imperceptible
distances. In my theory on capillary action, I have traced to
similar forces the effects of capillarity. All terrestrial
phenomena depend upon this species of force, just as celestial
phenomena depend upon universal gravitation, and the study of
these forces now seems to me the principal object of
mathematical philosophy" (written in 1823).
In 1824 a new truth was formulated from which was to be
developed a doctrine which was to overturn, to a great extent,
natural philosophy as conceived by Newton and Boscovich and
carried out by Laplace and his disciples. However, Sadi Carnot
(1796-1832), the author of this new truth, still assumed the
correctness of the theory of caloric. He proposed to extend to
heat-engines the principle of the impossibility of perpetual
motion recognized for engines of unchanging temperature, and was
led to the following conclusion: In order that a certain
quantity of calorie may produce work of the kind that human
industry requires, this caloric must pass from a hot to a cold
body; when the quantity of caloric is given, as well as the
temperatures to which these two bodies are raised, the useful
work produced admits of a superior limit independent of the
nature of the substances which transmit the caloric and of the
device by means of which the transmission is effected. The
moment that Carnot formulated this fertile truth, the
foundations of the theory of caloric were shaken. However, in
the hypothesis of caloric, how could the generation of heat by
friction be explained? Two bodies rubbed together were found to
be just as rich in caloric as they had been; therefore, whence
came the caloric evolved by friction?
As early as 1783 Lavoisier and Laplace were much troubled by the
problem, which also arrested the attention of physicists; as in
1798 when Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814) made
accurate experiments on the heat evolved by friction, and, in
1799, when similar experiments were made by Sir Humphrey Davy
(1778-1829). In 1803, beside the notes in which Laplace
announced some of the greatest conquests of the doctrine of
caloric, Berthollet, in his "Statique chimique", gave an account
of Rumford's experiments, trying in vain to reconcile them with
the prevailing opinion. Now these experiments, which were
incompatible with the hypothesis that heat is a fluid contained
in a quantity in each body, recalled to mind the supposition of
Descartes and Newton, which claimed heat to be a very lively
agitation of the small particles of bodies. It was in favour of
this view that Rumford and Davy finally declared themselves.
In the last years of his life Carnot consigned to paper a few
notes which remained unpublished until 1878. In these notes he
rejected the theory of caloric as inconsistent with Rumford's
experiments. "Heat", he added, "is therefore the result of
motion. It is quite plain that it can be produced by the
consumption of motive power and that it can produce this power.
Wherever there is destruction of motive power there is, at the
same time, production of heat in a quantity exactly proportional
to the quantity of motive power destroyed; and inversely,
wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of
motive power".
In 1842 Robert Mayer (1814-78) found the principle of the
equivalence between heat and work, and showed that once the
difference in two specific heats of a gas is known, it is
possible to calculate the mechanical value of heat. This value
differed little from that found by Carnot. Mayer's pleasing work
exerted scarcely any more influence on the progress of the
theory of heat than did Carnot's unpublished notes. However, in
1843 James Prescott Joule (1818-89) was the next to discover the
principle of the equivalence between heat and work, and
conducted several of the experiments which Carnot in his notes
had requested to have made. Joule's work communicated to the new
theory a fresh impetus. In 1849 William Thomson, afterwards Lord
Kelvin (1824-1907), indicated the necessity of reconciling
Carnot's principle with the thenceforth incontestable principle
of the mechanical equivalent of heat; and in 1850 Rudolf
Clausius (1822-88) accomplished the task; thus the science of
thermodynamics was founded. When in 1847 Hermann von Helmholtz
published his small work entitled "Ueber die Erhaltung der
Kraft", he showed that the principle of the mechanical
equivalent of heat not only established a bond between mechanics
and the theory of heat, but also linked the studies of chemical
reaction, electricity, and magnetism, and in this way physics
was confronted with the carrying-out of an entirely new
programme, whose results are at present too incomplete to be
judged even by scientists.
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PIERRE DUHEM
Physiocrats
Physiocrats
( physis, nature, kratein, rule)
A school of writers on political and economic subjects that
flourished in France in the second half of the eighteenth
century, and attacked the monopolies, exclusive corporations,
vexatious taxes, and various other abuses which had grown up
under the mercantile system. Statesmen of the mercantile school
in France and elsewhere had adopted a system of tutelage which
often gave an artificial growth to industry but which pressed
hardly upon agriculture. The physiocrats proposed to advance the
interests of agriculture by adopting a system of economic
freedom. Laissez faire et laissez passer was their watchword.
Franc,ois Quesnay (1694-1774), physician to Mme de Pompadour and
Louis XV, founded the school (1758). The term "physiocracy" was
probably used by Quesnay to convey the idea that the new system
provides for the reign of the natural law. Quesnay and his
disciples were called economistes by their contemporaries; the
term physiocrates was not used until the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
Political Philosophy
In metaphysics Quesnay was a follower of Descartes and borrowed
from him the mathematical method used in his "Tableau
Economique". He accepted a modified form of the natural rights
theory which pervades eighteenth-century literature and gave it
an optimistic interpretation. He emphasizes the distinction
between the natural order (ordre naturel) and the positive order
(ordre positif). The first is founded upon the laws of nature
which are the creation of God and which can be discovered by
reason. The second is man-made; when its laws coincide with
those of the natural order the world will be at its best. He
objected to the natural rights philosophers of his day that they
concerned themselves only with the positive order to the neglect
of the natural. He held that primitive man upon entering society
does not give up any of his natural rights, thus taking issue
with Rousseau's theory of the social contract. From his
optimistic doctrines concerning the laws of the natural order he
deduces his doctrine of laissez faire. Economic evils arise from
the monopolies and restrictions of the positive order; statesmen
should aim to harmonize the positive order with the natural by
abolishing these excrescences. The state should withdraw its
support from the attempts of special interests to bolster up
industry artificially. In the language of the physiocrats, "He
governs best who governs least". Although ultimately their
principles proved favourable to the Revolution, Quesnay and his
disciples were in favour of an absolute monarchy subject only to
the laws of the "natural order". They considered that it would
be easier to persuade a prince than a nation and that the
triumph of their principles would be sooner secured by the
sovereign power of a single man.
Economic Doctrine
Quesnay divides the citizens of a nation into three classes: the
productive, which cultivates the soil and pays a rent to the
landed proprietors, the proprietors (Turgot's classe
disponible), who receive the rent or net product (produit net)
of agriculture, and the barren (classe sterile), which comprises
those engaged in other occupations than that of agriculture, and
produces no surplus. For example, in a country producing five
billions of agricultural wealth annually, two billions will go
to the proprietors as rent. With this the proprietors will buy
one billion's worth of agricultural products and one billion's
worth of the manufactured products of the barren class. The
productive class also will buy one billion's worth of the
products of the barren class. The barren class will spend the
two billions which it receives in buying one billion's worth of
agricultural products upon which to subsist and one billion's
worth of raw material to work up into its finished product. Thus
the barren class receive two billions and spend two billions.
The value of their product equals the cost of their subsistence
plus the cost of the raw material. Thus industry and commerce
are barren. Agriculture is productive, since it supports those
who are engaged in it and produces in addition a surplus. The
national welfare depends upon having this surplus production as
large as possible. In other words, a nation will prosper not in
proportion as it succeeds in getting foreign money in return for
its manufactures, but in proportion to the amount of its net
product. The mercantilists, therefore, made a mistake in
encouraging manufactures and commerce at the expense of
agriculture. The true policy is to encourage agriculture.
Statesmen of the mercantile school thought it desirable to have
cheap food so that the home industries could compete with the
foreign and thus the nation might secure a favourable balance of
trade which would bring money into the country. The physiocrats
rejected the balance of trade argument and held that dear food
was desirable because this meant the prosperity of agriculture
and the swelling of the net product. Quesnay even held that
under some circumstances it might be desirable to levy a duty on
imported agricultural products or to grant an export bounty in
order to keep up prices. Holding that the incomes received by
the productive and sterile classes were just sufficient for
their support, the physiocrats believed that any tax levied upon
the members of either of these classes must be shifted until it
finally fell upon the net product belonging to the proprietors.
In the interest of economy of administration, therefore, they
urged that a single tax be levied upon rent. This was their
celebrated impot unique. The proposal was somewhat similar to
the more recent demands of Henry George for a single tax. The
physiocrats sought to protect the landed proprietors, while
George wished to expropriate them.
The School
Most of the ideas of the physiocratic school are found in
earlier writings. The expression laissez faire is said to have
been used by a French merchant, Legendre, in answering a
question addressed by Colbert to a gathering of merchants
concerning the needs of industry. The idea is developed in the
writings of Bois-Guillebert (1712) and the policy was advocated
by the Marquis d'Argenson in 1735. Gournay, a contemporary of
Quesnay, seems to have originated the extended expression
laissez faire et laissez passer. This formula called for freedom
of internal commerce and manufacture. Some critics hold that
Gournay is equally entitled with Quesnay to be called the
founder of the physiocratic school on account of the currency
which he gave to the doctrine of freedom of trade. Other sources
are Hume's criticism of the balance of trade theory, and
Cantillon, "Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General", in
which the importance of agriculture is recognized and the
doctrine of produit net developed. The elder Mirabeau was
Quesnay's first disciple. His "Philosophie rurale" (1763) gained
disciples. Dupont de Nemours, who later exerted considerable
influence in the Constituent Assembly in the discussions on
taxation, wrote several works in defence of the system. Other
important writers were Baudeau, Mercier de la Riviere, and
Letrosne. The most eminent of Quesnay's disciples was Turgot,
who, as Intendant of Limoges and afterwards as minister of
finance under Louis XVI, attempted to apply some of the
physiocratic principles practically (Reflexions sur la formation
et la distribution des richesses, 1766). Outside of France the
school had not many disciples. The best known are the Swiss
Iselin and the German Schlettwein. The latter was engaged by the
Margrave Karl Friedrich of Baden, a friend of Mirabeau, to
introduce the single tax in three villages of Baden. The
experiment, made under unfavourable conditions, was soon
abandoned. In Italy the physiocratic school had few followers.
In England, on account of the advanced position of trade and
industry, it had none.
Criticism
The principal service of the physiocrats to modern political
economy was not the discovery of any one of their doctrines, but
their attempt to formulate a science of society out of materials
already at hand. It was from this system as a base that Adam
Smith set out to give a new impetus to the study of economic
phenomena. Another important contribution consisted in calling
attention to the weaknesses of the mercantile system. Laissez
faire was a good doctrine for the eighteenth century because
there was need of a reaction, but it was a mistake to set it up
as a universal principle applicable under all conditions, The
chief weakness in the physiocratic teaching lay in its theory of
value. While agriculture brings forth the raw material of
production, commerce and manufactures are equally productive of
wealth. In a sense, the physiocrats recognized this, but they
held that in producing this wealth the manufacturing and
commercial classes use up an equivalent amount of value. This is
a gratuitous assumption, but even if true, the same thing could
be said of the so-called productive class. Moreover, if wages
were governed by the "iron law" both in agriculture and in
manufactures and commerce, as the physiocrats assume, the "net
product" would be made up of wealth created by the commercial
and manufacturing classes as well as by the agricultural class.
The theory of the impot unique or single tax rested upon the
assumption that all incomes, except those of the proprietors,
were at the existence minimum. Since this is not true, it is
also not true that all taxes levied upon the other classes will
ultimately be paid by the proprietors.
HIGGS, The Physiocrats (London, 1897); ONCKEN, OEuvres
economiques et philosophiques de Fr. Quesnay (Frankfort, 1888);
IDEM in Handwoerterbuch d. Staatswissenschaften, s. v. Quesnay;
HASBACH, D. allg. philosophischen. Grundlagen d. von F. Quesnay
u. A. Smith begruendeten politischen Oekonomie (Leipzig, 1890).
FRANK O'HARA.
Physiologus
Physiologus
An early Christian work of a popular theological type,
describing animals real or fabulous and giving each an
allegorical interpretation. Thus the story is told of the lion
whose cubs are born dead and receive life when the old lion
breathes upon them, and of the phoe;nix which burns itself to
death and rises on the third day from the ashes; both are taken
as types of Christ. The unicorn also which only permits itself
to be captured in the lap of a pure virgin is a type of the
Incarnation; the pelican that sheds its own blood in order to
sprinkle therewith its dead young, so that they may live again,
is a type of the salvation of mankind by the death of Christ on
the Cross. Some allegories set forth the deceptive enticements
of the Devil and his defeat by Christ; others present qualities
as examples to be imitated or avoided. The book, originally
written in Greek at Alexandria, perhaps for purposes of
instruction, appeared probably in the second century, though
some place its date at the end of the third or in the fourth
century. In later centuries it was ascribed to various
celebrated Fathers, especially St. Epiphanius, St. Basil, and
St. Peter of Alexandria. Origen, however, had cited it under the
title "Physiologus", while Clement of Alexandria and perhaps
even Justin Martyr seem to have known it. The assertion that the
method of the "Physiologus" presupposes the allegorical exegesis
developed by Origen is not correct; the so-called "Letter of
Barnabas" offers, before Origen, a sufficient model, not only
for the general character of the "Physiologus" but also for many
of its details. It can hardly be asserted that the later
recensions, in which the Greek text has been preserved, present
even in the best and oldest manuscripts a perfectly reliable
transcription of the original, especially as this was an
anonymous and popular treatise. "Physiologus" is not the
original title; it was given to the book because the author
introduces his stories from natural history with the phrase:
"the physiologus says", that is, the naturalist says, the
natural philosophers, the authorities for natural history say.
About 400 the "Physiologus" was translated into Latin; in the
fifth century into AEthiopic [edited by Hommel with a German
translation (Leipzig, 1877), revised German translation in
"Romanische Forschungen", V, 13-36]; into Armenian [edited by
Pitra in "Spicilegium Solesmense", III, 374-90; French
translation by Cahier in "Nouveaux Melanges d'archeologie,
d'histoire et de litterature" (Paris, 1874)]; into Syrian
[edited by Tychsen, "Physiologus Syrus" (Rostock, 1795), a later
Syrian and an Arabic version edited by Land in "Anecdota
Syriaca", IV (Leyden, 1875)]. Numerous quotations and references
to the "Physiologus" in the Greek and the Latin fathers show
that it was one of the most generally known works of Christian
antiquity. Various translations and revisions were current in
the Middle Ages. The earliest translation into Latin was
followed by various recensions, among them the "Dicta Johannis
Chrysostomi de naturis bestiarum", edited by Heider in "Archiv
fuer Kunde oesterreichischer Geschichtsquellen" (II, 550 sqq.,
1850). A metrical Latin "Physiologus" was written in the
eleventh century by a certain Theobaldus, and printed by Morris
in "An Old English Miscellany" (1872), 201 sqq.; it also appears
among the works of Hildebertus Cenomanensis in P. L., CLXXI,
1217-24. To these should be added the literature of the
"Bestiaries" (q. v.), in which the material of "Physiologus" was
used; the "Tractatus de bestiis et alius rebus", attributed to
Hugo of St. Victor, and the "Speculum naturale" of Vincent of
Beauvais.
Translations and adaptations from the Latin introduced the
"Physiologus" into almost all the languages of Western Europe.
An eleventh-century German translation was printed by
Muellenhoff and Scherer in "Denkmaeler deutscher Poesie und
Prosa" (No. LXXXI); a later translation (twelfth century) has
been edited by Lauchert in "Geschichte des Physiologus" (pp.
280-99); and a rhymed version appears in Karajan, "Deutsche
Sprachdenkmale des XII. Jahrhunderts" (pp. 73-106), both based
on the Latin text known as "Dicta Chrysostomi". Fragments of a
ninth-century Anglo-Saxon "Physiologus", metrical in form, still
exist; they are printed by Thorpe in "Codex Exoniensis" (pp.
335-67), and by Grein in "Bibliothek der angelsaechsischen
Poesie" (I, 223- 8). About the middle of the thirteenth century
there appeared an English metrical "Bestiary", an adaptation of
the Latin "Physiologus Theobaldi"; this has been edited by
Wright and Halliwell in "Reliquiae antiquae" (I, 208-27), also
by Morris in "An Old English Miscellany" (1-25). Icelandic
literature includes a "Physiologus" belonging to the early part
of the thirteenth century, edited by Dahlerup (Copenhagen,
1889). In the twelfth and thirteenth century there appeared the
"Bestiaires" of Philippe de Thaun, a metrical Old-French
version, edited by Thomas Wright in "Popular Treatises on
Science Written during the Middle Ages" (74-131), and by Walberg
(Lund and Paris, 1900); that by Guillaume, clerk of Normandy,
called "Bestiare divin", and edited by Cahier in his "Melanges
d'archeologie" (II-IV), also edited by Hippeau (Caen, 1852), and
by Reinsch (Leipzig, 1890); the "Bestiare" of Gervaise, edited
by Paul Meyer in "Romania" (I, 420-42); the "Bestiare" in prose
of Pierre le Picard, edited by Cahier in "Melanges" (II-IV). A
singular adaptation is found in the old Waldensian literature,
and has been edited by Alfons Mayer in "Romanische Forschungen"
(V, 392 sqq.). As to the Italian bestiaries, a Tosco-Venetian
"Bestiarius" has been edited (Goldstaub and Wendriner, "Ein
tosco-venezianischer Bestiarius", Halle, 1892). Extracts from
the "Physiologus" in Provenc,al have been edited by Bartsch,
"Provenzalisches Lesebuch" (162-66). The "Physiologus" survived
in the literatures of Eastern Europe in books on animals written
in Middle Greek, among the Slavs to whom it came from the
Byzantines, and in a Roumanian translation from a Slavic
original (edited by Gaster with an Italian translation in
"Archivio glottologico italiano", X, 273-304). Medieval poetical
literature is full of allusions to the "Physiologus", and it
also exerted great influence on the symbolism of medieval
ecclesiastical art; symbols like those of the phoe;nix and the
pelican are still well-known and popular.
Lauchert, Gesch. d. Physiologus (Strasburg, 1889),
supplemented in Romanische Forschungen, V, 3-12, and in
Zeitschrift fuer katholische Theologie, XXXIII (1909), 177-79;
Keppler, D. mittelalterliche Physiologus in Archiv fuer christ.
Kunst, IX (1891), n. 2-4, pp. 14-16, 23-4, 32-6; Michael, Gesch.
d. deutschen Volkes, III (Freiburg, 1903), 413-17; Pitra, in
Spicilegium Solesmense, III (Paris, 1855), 338-73; Karnejev, D.
Physiologus d. Moskauer Synodalbibliothek in Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, III (1894), 26-63; Peters, D. griechische
Physiologus u. seine orientalischen Uebersetzungen (Berlin,
1898); the Latin text has been edited by Cahier and Martin,
Melanges d'archeologie, d'hist. et de litt., II-IV (Paris, 1851-
56); Goldstaub, D. Physiologus u., seine Weiterbildung besonders
in d. lateinischen u. byzantinischen Lit. in Philologus,
supplementary vol. VIII (1901), 337-404; Krumbacher, Gesch. d.
byzantinischen Lit. (2nd ed., Munich, 1897), 874-77;
Strzygowski, D. Bilderkreis d. griechischen Physiologus in
Byzantinischen Archiv, II (Leipzig, 1899); Leitschuh, Gesch. d.
karolingischen Malerei (Berlin, 1894), 405 sq.; Schmid, Christ.
Symbole aus alter u. neuer Zeit (2nd ed., Freiberg, 1909);
Dreves, D. Jagd d. Einhorns in Stimmen aus Maria-Lauch, XLIII
(1892), 66-76.
Friederich Lauchert
Piacenza
Piacenza
DIOCESE OF PIACENZA (PLACENTINENSIS)
Piacenza is a diocese in Emilia, central Italy. The city is
situated on the right of the Po, near its junction with the
Trebbia, in an important strategic position. Agriculture is the
chief industry. The cathedral is of the ninth century; it was
remodelled by Santa da Sambuceto and others (1122-1223) in
beautiful Lombard style. The campanile, over 216 feet high, is
surmounted by an angel, in brass; the cupola is a more recent
part of the edifice; there are frescoes by Guercino and by
Morazzone, Ludovico Carracci, Procaccino, and others. Its
Cappella del Crocifisso has an arch with statues of Nero and of
Vespasian; the Cappella di S. Corrado has an admirable Madonna
by Zitto di Tagliasacchi, and contained once a picture of St.
Conrad by Lanfranco, but it was taken to France. Among the
churches is S. Antonio (fourth century), many times restored;
until 877 it was the cathedral; in 1183 the preliminaries of the
Peace of Constance were concluded in this church; here also are
paintings by Procaccino, Mulinaretto, Novoloni etc.; the
sacristy contains a triptych with the gesta of S. Antonio. In
the pastor's residence of S. Andrea there is an ancient mosaic.
S. Bartolommeo, formerly a church of the Jesuits, contains
besides its beautiful paintings two crucifixes, one very
ancient, the other dating from 1601. S. Francesco (1278) has
beautiful columns, but has been disfigured by incongruous
restorations; it contains a Piet`a by Bernardo Castelli, a
Madonna by Francia, and the tomb of the famous Franciscan,
Francesco Mairone (1477). S. Giovanni in Canali (1220), formerly
of the Templars, and later of the Dominicans, has also been
disfigured by its restorations; it contains statues of Pius V
and Benedict XI, the tomb of the Scotti family and of the
physician Gulielmo da Saliceto. S. Savino (903) was restored
several times and entirely transformed in the eighteenth
century; formerly there was a monastery annexed to it; in its
recent restorations, paintings of the fourteenth century were
discovered, and also pillars and other sculptures of the
original construction, as well as mosaics, a crucifix carved in
wood, and other objects. Outside the city the monastery of the
Cassinesi Benedictines, S. Sisto, founded in 874 by Queen
Angilberga, is a veritable sanctuary of art; the famous Sistine
Madonna by Raphael, was first here, but was sold by the monks,
to obtain funds for repairs. Santa Maria in Campagna contains a
very ancient statue in marble of Our Lady, four statues in wood
by Hermann Geernaert, and paintings by Procaccino, Pordenone,
Guercino, and others.
The Palazzo Ducale, a work of Vignola (1558), has since 1800
served as a barracks. The Palazzo Anguissola da Grazzano
contains fine paintings. The Palazzo Brandini has a gallery of
paintings by Correggio, Reni, Guercino, Andrea del Sarto, and
Murillo. The Palazzo Landi contains paintings by Van Dyck. The
Palazzo Palastrelli has a library of works on the history of
Piacenza. Cardinal Alberoni established in this town a famous
college. Its church has paintings by Paolo Veronese, Guido Reni,
and others. The Piazza de Cavalli has equestrian statues of
Alessandro and of Ranuccio I, Farnese, by Mocchi da Montevarchi.
Placentia, with Cremona, was founded in 218 B. C., to hold in
check the Gauls after their defeat near Clastidium. The Via
AEmilia terminated there. Scipio, defeated near the Trebbia,
retreated to this town. In 206 it was besieged in vain by
Hasdrubal and burned by the Gauls in 200. There Emperor Otho
defeated Vitellius (69) and then Aurelian was defeated by the
Alamanni (271); there also Emperor Orestes was decapitated
(467). The Lombards took possession of it, at the beginning of
their invasion, and thereafter it remained in their power. From
the ninth century the temporal power was in the hands of the
bishops, until the twelfth century, when the town became a
commune, governed by consuls, and later (1188), by a podest`a.
In the wars between the Lombard cities and with the emperors,
Piacenza was an ally of Milan, on account of its hatred of
Cremona and of Pavia; wherefore it was Guelph and a party to
both of the Lombard leagues. Twice, Uberto Palavicino made
himself lord of the city (1254 and 1261), but the free commune
was re-established. From 1290 to 1313, Alberto Scotti was lord
of Piacenza; his rule had many interruptions, as in 1308, by
Guido della Torre of Milan, in 1312, by Henry VII. The latter's
vicar, Galeazzo Visconti, was expelled by the pontifical legate
Bertrando del Poggetto (1322-35). In 1336 Piacenza came again
under the rule of the dukes of Milan; between 1404 and 1418 they
were compelled to retake the city on various occasions. In 1447
there was a new attempt to re-establish independent government.
The fortunes of war gave Piacenza to the Holy See in 1512; in
1545 it was united to the new Duchy of Parma. After the
assassination of Pier Luigi Farnese, which occurred at Piacenza
(1547), the city was occupied by the troops of the imperial
governor of Milan and was not restored to the Duchy of Parma for
ten years. In 1746 the Austrians obtained a great victory there
over the French and Spaniards, and in 1799 the Russians and
Austrians defeated the French. Napoleon made Lebrun Duke of
Piacenza.
St. Antonius, who is said to have belonged to the Theban Legion,
suffered martyrdom at Piacenza, in the second or third century.
The first known bishop is St. Victor, present at the Council of
Sardica (343); St. Savinus, present at Aquileia (381), was
probably the Savinus to whom St. Ambrose wrote several letters.
Other bishops were St. Maurus, St. Flavianus, St. Majorianus
(451). Whether the emperor of this name intended to become
Bishop of Piacenza is uncertain; he was not its bishop, having
been killed soon after his abdication. Joannes was a
contemporary of St. Gregory the Great; Thomas (737) was very
influential with King Luitprand; Podo (d. 839) was honoured with
a metrical epitaph; Guido (904), a man of arms rather than of
the Church; Boso (940) freed himself from the jurisdiction of
the metropolitan See of Ravenna (re-established by Gregory V),
and became the antipope John XVI; Pietro (1031) was exiled to
Germany by Conrad II; Dionisio was deposed in 1076 by Gregory
VII; St. Bonizo (1088), who had been Bishop of Sutri and a great
supporter of Gregory VII, was killed in 1089; during the
incumbency of Aldo (1096), Emilia was temporarily taken from the
jurisdiction of Ravenna; Arduino (1118) founded the new
cathedral; Ugo (1155), a nephew of Anacletus II, was driven from
his diocese by the schismatics; under Ardizzone (1192) and
Grumerio (1199) grave contentions began between the clergy and
the consuls, and Grumerio was driven from the diocese; Orlando
da Cremona, O.P., was mortally wounded by a Catharist while
preaching (1233); P. Alberto Pandoni (1243), an Augustinian;
Pietro Filargo (1386) became Pope Alexander V; Pietro Maineri
(1388) was formerly the physician of Galeazzo II; Branda
Castiglione (1404) was a professor of law at Pavia, and took
part in the conciliabulum of Pisa and in the Council of
Constance, and became a cardinal; Alessio da Siregno (1412) was
a famous preacher; Fabrizio Marliani (1476) was very zealous for
the reform of morals in the clergy and in the people; Cardinal
Scaramuzza Trivulzio (1519); Catalano Trivulzio (1525); Cardinal
Giovanni Bernardino Scotti (1559) was a very learned Theatine;
the Bl. Paolo Burali (1570), a Theatine, became a cardinal;
Cardinal Filippo Sega (1578); Alessandro Scappi (1627) was
obliged to leave the duchy for having excommunicated the duke,
Odoardo; Alessandro Pisani's election (1766) was one of the
causes of dissension with the Holy See; Stefano Fallot de
Beaumont (1807) was present at the national council of Paris
(1810). Bl. Corrado (d. at Noto in 1351) was from Piacenza. The
councils of Piacenza were those of 1076 (concerning the
schismatics against Gregory VII), 1090 (Urban II against the
concubinage of the clergy, and in favour of the crusade), 1132
(Innocent II against Anacletus II). There were ten synods under
Bishop Marliani (1476-1508).
In 1582 the diocese was made a suffragan of Bologna; it is now
immediately dependent upon the Holy See. It has 350 parishes,
with 310,000 inhabitants, 11 religious houses for men, and 29
for women, 5 educational establishments for male students, and
18 for girls, 1 daily paper, and 1 monthly periodical. The
diocese has a house of missionaries for emigrants established by
the late bishop, Mgr. Scalabrini.
UNIVERSITY OF PIACENZA
Piacenza was the first Italian city to apply for a Bull erecting
its town-schools into a studium generale, which Bull was granted
by Innocent IV in 1248, and conferred all the usual privileges
of other studia generalia; by it the power of giving degrees was
vested in the Bishop of Piacenza. But no practical work was done
here until 1398, when Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan and
Pavia, refounded the university in his capacity of Vicar of the
Empire. The University of Pavia was suppressed, as he did not
wish to have a university in either of his capitals. Gian
Galeazzo liberally endowed Piacenza, organizing a university of
jurists as well as a university of arts and medicine, each with
an independent rector. Between 1398 and 1402 seventy-two
salaried professors are recorded as having lectured, including
not only the usual professors of theology, law, medicine,
philosophy, and grammar, but also the new chairs of astrology,
rhetoric, Dante, and Seneca. But this endeavour to establish a
large university in a small town which had no natural influx of
students was doomed to failure, and little or no work was done
after Gian Galeazzo's death in 1402. In 1412 Pavia had its
university restored, and the subjects of the duchy were
forbidden to study elsewhere. Piacenza then obtained an
unenviable notoriety as a market for cheap degrees. This traffic
was still flourishing in 1471, though no lectures had been given
for sixty years. A college of law and a college of arts and
medicine, however, maintained a shadowy existence for many years
later. Among the famous teachers at Piacenza may be named the
jurist Placentinus, founder of the law-school at Montpellier (d.
there 1192); and Baldus (b. 1327), the most famous jurist of his
day (Muratori, "Rer. It. SS.", XX, 939).
DIOCESE.--CAPPELLETTI, Le Chiese d'Italia, XV; CAMPI, Historia
ecclesiastica di Piacenza; POGGIALI, Memorie storiche di
Piacenza (12 vols., 1757-66); GIARELLI, Storia di Piacenza (2
vols., 1889); MURATORI, Rerum italicarum Scr., XX; MALCHIODI
(and others), La regia basilica di S. Savino in Piacenza
(Piacenza, 1903). See also PARMA.
UNIVERSITY.--CAMPI, Hist. Univers. delle cose eccl. come
seculari di Piacenza, II (Piacenza, 1651), 187 sq.; RASHDALL,
Univ. of Europe in the Middle Ages, II, pt. I (Oxford, 1895),
35.
U. BENIGNI & C.F. WEMYSS BROWN
Giambattista Pianciani
Giambattista Pianciani
Scientist, b. at Spoleto, 27 Oct., 1784; d. at Rome, 23 March,
1862. He entered the Society of Jesus on 2 June, 1805; after
having received the ordinary Jesuit training he was sent to
various cities in the Papal States to teach mathematics and
physics and finally was appointed professor in the Roman
College, where he lectured and wrote on scientific subjects for
twenty-four years. He was an active member of the Accademia
d'Arcadia, his academical pseudonym being "Polite Megaride", of
the Accademia de' Lincei, and of other scientific societies. His
scientific labours were abruptly brought to an end by the
Revolution of 1848; he succeeded, however, in making his escape
from Rome and having come to America he taught dogmatic theology
during the scholastic year 1849-50 at the Jesuit theologate then
connected with Georgetown College, Washington, D. C. When peace
was restored in Rome he returned thither and from 1851 till his
death was engaged chiefly in administrative duties and in
teaching philosophy both in the Roman College and in the
Collegio Filosofico in the University of Rome, of which latter
college he was president during the last two years of his life.
Besides numerous articles on scientific subjects, especially on
electricity and magnetism, and on philosophico-religious
subjects, he published the following works: "Istituzioni
fisico-chemiche" (4 vols., Rome, 1833-4); "Elementi di
fisico-chimica" (2 vols., Naples, 1840-41); "In historiam
creationis mosaicam commentarius" (Naples, 1851), which he wrote
whilst at Georgetown and of which there is a German translation
by Schoettl (Ratisbon, 1853); "Saggi filosfici" (Rome, 1855);
"Nuovi saggi filosofici" (Rome, 1856); "Cosmogonia naturale
comparata col Genesi" (Rome, 1862).
SOMMERVOGEL, Bibl. de la C. de J., VI (Brussels, 1895).
EDWARD C. PHILLIPS
Piano Carpine, Giovanni Da
Giovanni da Piano Carpine
Born at Pian di Carpine (now called della Magione), near
Perugia, Umbria, 1182; died probably in 1252. Having entered the
Franciscan Order he was a companion of Caesar of Spires, the
leader of the second mission of the Franciscans to Germany in
1221. He took a leading part in founding various new
establishments of the order, and was several times provincial in
Saxony and once in Spain. In 1245 Innocent IV, in compliance
with the resolutions passed at the first council of Lyons,
entrusted Carpine with an embassy to the princes and people of
Mongolia or Tatary with a view to checking the invasions of
these formidable hordes and eventually effecting their
conversion. Carpine set out early in 1246; among his companions
were Brothers Stephen of Bohemia and Benedict of Poland, who
were to act as interpreters. They were hospitably entertained by
Duke Vasilico in Russia, where they read the pope's letters to
the assembled schismatic bishops, leaving them favourably
disposed towards reunion. They reached Kanieff, a town on the
Tatar frontier, early in February. The Tatar officials referred
them to Corenza, commander of the advance guards, who in his
turn directed them to Batu, Khan of Kipchak etc., then encamped
on the banks of the Volga. Batu commissioned two soldiers to
escort the papal envoys to Karakorum, the residence of the Great
Khan. They reached their destination in the middle of July after
a journey of indescribable hardships. The death of the Great
Khan Okkodai made it necessary to defer negotiations till the
end of August when Kuyuk, his successor, ascended the throne.
After much delay Kuyuk finally demanded a written statement of
the pope's propositions. His letter in reply is still preserved.
Its tone is dignified and not unfriendly, but independent and
arrogant. In it he says in substance: "If you desire peace, come
before me! We see no reason why we should embrace the Christian
religion. We have chastised the Christian nations because they
disobeyed the commandments of God and Jenghiz Khan. The power of
God is manifestly with us." The superscription reads; "Kuyuk, by
the power of God, Khan and Emperor of all men -- to the Great
Pope!" Carpine procured a translation of the letter in Arabic
and Latin. On their homeward journey the envoys halted at the
former stations, arriving at Kieff (Russia) in June, 1247. They
were enthusiastically received everywhere, especially by the
Dukes Visilico and Daniel, his brother, Carpine's proposals for
reunion had been accepted in the meantime, and special envoys
were to accompany him to the papal Court. From a political and
religious aspect the mission to Tatary proved successful only in
a remote sense, but the ambassadors brought with them invaluable
information regarding the countries and peoples of the Far East.
Carpine's written account, the first of its kind and remarkable
for its accuracy, was exhaustively drawn upon by such writers as
Cantu and Huc ("Travels in Tatary, Thibet and China", 2 vols.,
1852). It has been published by d'Azevac: "Jean de Plan de
Carpin, Relation des Mongols ou Tartares" in "Recueil de
voyages", IV (Paris, 1839), and later by Kuelb: "Geschichte der
Missionsreisen nach der Mongolei", I (Ratisbon, 1860), 1-129.
Salimbene, who met Carpine in France, found him "a pleasant man,
of lively wit, eloquent, well-instructed, and skilful in many
things". Innocent IV bestowed upon him every mark of esteem and
affection. Having been sent as papal legate to St. Louis, King
of France, Carpine was shortly afterwards named Archbishop of
Antivari in Dalmatia.
Chronica Fr. Jordani d`a Jano in Analecta Franciscana
(Quaracchi, 1885-), I, 8-18; II, 71; III, 266; WADDING,
Scriptores (Rome, 1906), s. v.; SBARALEA, Supplementum (Rome,
1806), s. v.; DA CIVEZZA, Storia universale della missione
francescane, I (Rome, 1857), 324 sqq.; IV (Rome, 1860), 186;
EUBEL. Gesch. der oberdeutschen Minoritenprovinz (Wuerzburg,
1886), 4, 6, 9, 20, 206; IDEM, Die Bischoefe aus dem
Minoritenorden in Roem. Quartalschrift, IV, 207, n. 9; VOIGY in
Abhandlungen der philolog,-histor. Klasse der koenigl. saechs.
Gesellsch. d. Wissensch., V (Leipzig, 1870). 465 sqq.; HUC,
Christianity in China, Tatary and Thibet, I, (tr., New York,
1897), v; DA MALIGNANO, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi and a
Sketch of the Franciscan Order (tr., New York, 1887), 444 sqq.;
VIATOR in Etudes franciscaines, V (1901), 505 sqq., 600 sqq.;
GOLUBOVICH, Biblioteca bio-bib, delia Terra Santa, I (Quaracchi,
1906), 190 sqq. SCHLAGER, Mongotenfahrten der Franziskaner in
Aus allen Zonen (Bilder aus den Missionen der Franziskaner in
Verg. u. Gegenw.), II, 1-43.
THOMAS PLASSMANN.
Piatto Cardinalizio
Piatto Cardinalizio
An allowance granted by the pope to cardinals residing in curia
or otherwise employed by the Church, to enable them to maintain
their dignity with decorum. It was not given to cardinals
supported in Rome by their sovereign, nor is it accepted by
cardinals of noble family. The entire allowance was not always
granted. If the cardinal had other revenues, he received enough
to make up the amount of the allowance. This designation piatto
was first used in the conclave of 1458. Paul II fixed the sum at
100 gold florins a month for cardinals whose revenues were not
more than 4000 florins. This sum was called "the poor cardinal's
plate". Leo XI intended to provide otherwise for the needful
revenues. Paul V raised the piatto to 1500 scudi a year for
cardinals whose ecclesiastical revenues were less than 6000
scudi. Then the custom was introduced of giving 6000 scudi
annually to cardinals without ecclesiastical revenues. This sum
was reduced in 1746 to 4000 scudi, as determined in 1464, and
1484, the amount allowed to-day, the cardinals renouncing their
ecclesiastical benefices. For some distinguished cardinals the
amount was larger. The piazzo cardinalizio is reckoned today at
4000 Roman scudi (about $4000). It is reduced according to the
other revenues of the cardinal.
MORONI, Dizionario, LII, 274 sqq.
U. BENIGNI
Piauhy, Diocese of
Diocese of Piauhy
(DE PIAUHY, PIAHUNENSIS)
Suffragan of the Archdiocese of Belem do Para, in the State of
Piauhy, north-eastern Brazil, The state is bounded on the north
by the Atlantic, west by Maranhao, south by Bahia, east by
Pemambuco and Ceara. It takes its name from the river Piauhy.
Its area is 116,218 sq. miles, and it has a coast line of ten
miles. Piauhy is one of the poorest of the Brazilian states. It
has a small trade in cotton and cattle, Frequent periods of
drought, followed by famine and typhus, add to the disadvantages
of its unhealthful climate. Except in mountainous districts,
vegetation is scanty; even the agricultural products --
sugar-cane, coffee, tobacco -- barely support the population.
Therezina is the capital and Parnahyba the chief port.
Emigration is making heavy drains on the population, and
attempts to colonize by immigration have proved unsuccessful.
The Diocese of Piauhy, formerly included in the Diocese of Sao
Luiz do Maranhao, was, on 11 August, 1902, erected by Leo XIII
into a separate diocese. Its jurisdiction comprises the Piauhy
State, and its population (1911) is 425,000, with 32 parishes.
Its first bishop, Mgr de Aranjo Pereira (born at Limolira, 4
Nov., 1853), was consecrated on 9 Nov., 1903, and the present
bishop Mgr Joachim Antonio de Almeida (born 7 Aug., 1868) on 14
December, 1905.
J. MORENO-LACALLE.
Piazza Armerina, Diocese of
Diocese of Piazza Armerina
(PLATIENSIS)
Located in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily. The city of
Piazza Armerina is situated on a high hill in a very fertile
district. Its origin is obscure. Gulielmo il Malo destroyed it
in 1166 on account of a rebellion, and Gulielmo il Buono rebuilt
it, together with the church of l'Asunta, now the cathedral, and
in which there is an admirable picture of the Assumption by
Paladino. The church of the priory of S. Andrea also has fine
paintings and frescoes. The diocese, taken from that of Catania
was created in 1817, its first prelate was Girolamo Aprile e
Benzi; it is a suffragan of Syracuse, has 23 parishes, with
184,500 inhabitants, 7 religious houses of men and 19 of women,
1 school for boys and 7 for girls, and 1 Catholic weekly.
CAPPELLEITTI, Le Chiese d'Italia, XXI.
U. BENIGNI.
Piazzi
Giuseppe Piazzi
Astronomer, b. at Ponte in Valtellina, 16 July, 1746; d. at
Naples, 22 July, 1826. He took the habit of the Theatines at
Milan and finished his novitiate at the convent of San Antonio.
Studying at colleges of the order at Milan, Turin, Rome, and
Genoa, under such preceptors as Tiraboschi, Beccaria, Le Seur,
and Jacquier, he acquired a taste for mathematics and astronomy.
He taught philosophy for a time at Genoa and mathematics at the
new University of Malta while it lasted. In 1779, as professor
of dogmatic theology in Rome, his colleague was Chiaramonti,
later Pius VII. In 1780 he was called to the chair of higher
mathematics at the academy of Palermo. There he soon obtained a
grant from Prince Caramanico, Viceroy of Sicily, for an
observatory. As its director he was charged to get the necessary
instruments. He went to Paris in 1787 to study with Lalande, to
England in 1788 to work with Maskelyne and the famous
instrument-maker Ramsden. A large vertical circle with reading
microscopes, a transit, and other apparatus were sent to Palermo
in 1789, where they were placed on top of a tower of the royal
palace. Observations were started in May, 1791, and the first
reports were published as early as 1792. Soon he was able to
correct errors in the estimation of the obliquity of the
ecliptic, of the aberration of light, of the length of the
tropical year, and of the parallax of the fixed stars. He saw
the necessity for a revision of the existing catalogues of stars
and for the exact determination of their positions. In 1803 he
published a list of 6784 stars and in 1814 a second catalogue
containing 7646 stars. Both lists were awarded prizes by the
Institute of France.
While looking for a small star mentioned in one of the earlier
lists he made his great discovery of the first known planetoid,
1 Jan., 1801. Locating a strange heavenly body of the eighth
magnitude and repeating the observation several nights in
succession, he found that this star had shifted slightly.
Believing it to be a comet, he announced its discovery. These
few but exact measurements enabled Gauss to calculate the orbit
and to find that this was a new planet, between Mars and
Jupiter. Kepler and Bode had called attention to the apparent
gap between these two, so that the placing of this new body
within that space caused great excitement among astronomers.
Piazzi proposed the name of Ceres Ferdinandea, in honour of his
king. Over 600 of these so-called planetoids have since been
located within the same space. The king desired to strike a gold
medal with Piazzi's effigy, in commemoration, but the astronomer
requested the privilege of using the money for the purpose of a
much-needed equatorial telescope. In 1812 he received the
commission to reform the weights and measures of Sicily in
accordance with the metric system. In 1817 as director-general
of the observatories of the Two Sicilies he was charged with the
plans of the new observatory which Murat was establishing in
Naples. He was a member of the Academies of Naples, Turin,
Goettingen, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, foreign associate of the
Institute of Milan etc. Besides the numerous memoirs published
in the proceedings of the various academies, the following works
may be mentioned: "Della specula astronomica di Palermo libri
quatro" (Palermo, 1792); "Sull' orologio Italiano e l'Europeo"
(Palermo, 1798); "Della scoperta del nuovo planeta Cerere
Ferdinandea" (Palermo, 1802); "Praecipuarum stellarum
inerrantium positiones mediae ineunte seculo XIX ex
obsrvationibus habitis in specula Panormitana at 1793 ad 1802"
(Palermo, 1803, 1814); "Codice metrico siculo" (Catane, 1812);
"Lezioni di astronomia" (Palermo, 1817; tr. Westphal, Berlin,
1822); "Raggnaglio dal reale osservatorio d'Napoli" (Naples,
1821).
Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie (Munich, 1871); Maineri,
L'Astronomo Giovanni Piazzi (Milan, 1871); Cosmos (Paris, 2
March, and 15 June, 1901); Kneller, Das Christentum (Freiburg,
1904), 75-80.
WILLIAM FOX
John Pibush
Ven. John Pibush
English martyr, born at Thirsk, Yorkshire; died at St Thomas's
Waterings, Camberwell, 18 February, 1600-1.
According to Gillow he was probably a son of Thomas Pibush, of
Great Fencott, and Jane, sister to Peter Danby of Scotton. He
came to Reims on 4 August, 1580, received minor orders and
subdiaconate in September, and diaconate in December, 1586, and
was ordained on 14 March, 1587. He was sent on the English
mission on 3 January, 1588-9, arrested at Morton-in-Marsh,
Gloucestershire, in 1593, and sent to London, where he arrived
before 24 July. The Privy Council committed him to the Gatehouse
at Westminster, where he remained a year. He was then tried at
the Gloucester Assizes under 27 Eliz., c. 2, for being a priest,
but not sentenced, and was returned to Gloucester gaol, whence
he escaped on 19 February (1594-5). The next day he was
recaptured at Matson and taken back to Gloucester gaol, whence
he was sent to the Marshalsea, London, and again tried under the
same statute at Westminster on 1 July, 1595. He was sentenced to
suffer the penalties of high treason at St. Thomas's Waterings,
and in the meantime was to be returned to the Marshalsea.
However, by the end of the year he was in the Queen's Bench
prison, where he remained for more than five years. The sentence
was carried out after one day's notice.
Knox, Douay Diaries (London, 1878), 169, 179, 198, 212, 214,
222; Pollen, Acts of the English Martyrs (London, 1901), 333-6;
English Martyrs, 1584- 1603 (London Cath. Rec. Soc., 1908),
337-40; Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath., s. v.; Challoner,
Missionary Preists, I, n. 123; Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council
(London, 1880-1907) xxiv, 421.
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT
Jean Picard
Jean Picard
Astronomer, b. at La Fleche, 21 July, 1620; d. at Paris, 12
Oct., 1682. He was a priest and prior of Rille in Anjou. As a
pupil of Gassendi he observed with him the solar eclipse of 25
Aug., 1645. In 1655 he succeeded his master as professor of
astronomy at the College de France. His principal achievement
was the accurate measurement of an arc of a meridian of the
earth, the distance from Sourdon, near Amiens, to Malvoisine,
south of Paris, in 1669-70. His result, 57060 toises (a toise =
about 6.4 ft.) for the degree of arc, has been found to be only
14 toises too small. He applied telescopes and micrometers to
graduated astronomical and measuring instruments as early as
1667. The quadrant he used had a radius of 38 inches and was so
finely graduated that he could read the angles to one quarter of
a minute. The sextant employed for determining the meridian was
6 feet in radius. In 1659 he was able to observe stars on the
meridian during day-time and to measure their position with the
aid of cross-wires at the focus of his telescope. In order to
make sure that his standard toise should not be lost, like those
used by others before him, he conceived the idea of comparing it
with the length of the simple pendulum beating seconds at Paris,
and thus made it possible to reproduce the standard at any time.
Picard is regarded as the founder of modern astronomy in France.
He introduced new methods, improved the old instruments, and
added new devices, such as the pendulum clock. As a result of
Picard's work, Newton was able to revise his calculations and
announce his great law of universal gravitation. The discovery
of the aberration of light also became a possibility on account
of Picard's study of Tycho Brahe's observations. In 1671 he
received from Bartholinus at Copenhagen an exact copy of Tycho's
records and then went with Bartholinus to the Island of Hveen in
order to determine the exact position of Tycho's observatory at
Uranienborg. He was modest and unselfish enough to recommend the
rival Italian astronomer Cassini to Colbert and Louis XIV for
the direction of the new observatory at Paris. Cassini, on the
contrary, proved envious, ignoring Picard's insistent
recommendations of a mural circle for accurate meridional
observations, until after the latter's death.
Picard was among the first members of the Academy. He also
started the publication of the annual "Connaissance des temps"
in 1679 (Paris, 1678), and continued the same until 1683. Since
then it has been published continuously. His "Mesure de la
terre" was brought out in 1671, Paris.
Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie (Munich, 1879); Delambre, Hist.
de l'astr. mod., II (Paris, 1821), 567-632.
WILLIAM FOX
Alessandro Piccolomini
Alessandro Piccolomini
Litterateur, philosopher, astronomer, b. 13 June, 1508; d. 12
March, 1578. He passed his youth in the study of literature and
wrote several comedies ("Amor costante", "Alessandro",
"Ortensio"), translated into Italian verse Ovid's
"Metamorphoses", part of the "AEneid", Aristotle's "Poetics" and
"Rhetoric", composed a hundred sonnets (Rome, 1549), and other
rhyme. He repudiated in later years "Raffaello" or "Dialogo
della creanza donne" as too licentious. In 1540 he became
professor of philosophy at Padua, where he wrote "Istituzione di
tutta la vita dell' uomo nato nobile e in citt`a libera",
"Filosofia naturale" in which he followed the theories of
ancient and medieval philosophers, while in his "Trattato della
grandezza della terra e dell' acqua" (Venice, 1558), he
combatted the Aristotelean and Ptolemaic opinion that water was
more extensive than land, thereby provoking, with Antonio Berga,
professor at Mondovi, a controversy, in which he was assisted by
Giambattista Bennedetti. In astronomy ("Sfera del mondo", "Delle
stelle fisse", "Speculazioni de' pianeti") he adhered to the
Ptolemaic theory. He also wrote on the reform of the calendar
(1578), and a commentary on the mechanics of Aristotle. To
counteract "Raffaella" he wrote his "Orazione in lode delle
donne" (Rome, 1549). His fame extended beyond Italy. Gregory
XIII, in 1574, appointed him titular Bishop of Patrae and
coadjutor to Francesco Bandini, Archbishop of Siena, who
survived him.
FABIANI, Vita di Alessandro Piccolomini (Siena, 1749 and 1759);
TIRABOSCHI, Storia della letteratura italiana, VII, pt. i.
U. BENIGNI
Jacopo Piccolomini-Ammannati
Jacopo Piccolomini-Ammannati
A cardinal, born in the Villa Basilica near Lucca, 1422; died at
San Lorenzo near Bolsena, 10 Sept., 1479. He was related to the
Piccolomini of Siena. His literary and theological education he
acquired in Florence. Under Nicholas V he went to Rome, where,
for a while, he lived in extreme penury. In 1450 he became
private secretary to Cardinal Domenico Capranica; later Calistus
III appointed him secretary of Briefs. He was retained in this
office by Pius II, who also made him a member of the pontifical
household, on which occasion he assumed the family name of
Piccolomini. In 1460 he was made Bishop of Pavia by Pius II, and
throughout the pontificate of the latter was his most trusted
confidant and adviser. He exhibited paternal solicitude in the
government of his diocese, and during his prolonged absences
entrusted its affairs to able vicars, with whom he remained in
constant touch, On 18 December, 1461, he was made cardinal, and
was commonly known as the Cardinal of Pavia. He accompanied Pius
II to Ancona, and attended him in his last illness. In the
subsequent conclave he favoured the election of Paul II, whose
displeasure he afterward incurred by insisting on the full
observance of the ante-election capitulations that the pope had
signed. The imprisonment of his private secretary by Paul II on
a charge of complicity in the conspiracy of the "Accademici'
offended Piccolomini still more, and his open defence of the
secretary aggravated the pope's ill-will. The disfavour in which
he was held by Paul II did not exempt his episcopal revenues
from sequestration by the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria. It was
due to his insistence that Paul II took energetic measures
against George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia. Sixtus IV was
scarcely more favourable towards Piccolomini than Paul II.
He was the friend of students and scholars, and protected Jacopo
de Volterra. In 1470 he was transferred to the See of Lucca and
was named papal envoy to Umbria. He wrote a continuation in
seven books of the "Commentarii" of Pius II. His style is
elegant, but he is not always impartial, especially apropos of
Paul II or Sixtus IV. His Commentaries, nevertheless, remain an
important source for contemporary history and his valuable
letters have been collected and published. Ammannati is one of
the most sympathetic personalities of the Italian Renaissance.
He enjoyed the friendship of noted prelates and humanists, among
others, Cardinals Bessarion, Carvajal, Roverella etc. Bessarion
(Pastor, "Geschichte der Paepste", II, 731), praises his
executive ability and readiness, his charity and zeal.
Epistoloe et commentarii Jacobi Piccolomini cardinalis Papiensis
(Milan, 1506), added also to the Frankfort ad. of the
Commentarii of Pius II (Frankfort, 1614); PAULI, Disquisizione
istorica della patria e compendio della vita del Card. Jacopo
Ammannati (Lucca, 1712); CARDELLA, Vite del' Cardinali, III,
153.
U. BENIGNI
Pichler
Pichler
A renowned Austrian family of gem-cutters who lived and died in
Italy.
ANTONIO (JOHANN ANTON) born at Brixen, Tyrol, 12 April, 1697;
died in Rome, 14 Sept., 1779. He was the son of a physician and
had been a merchant until, travelling in Italy, he resolved to
devote himself to art, He went to work in Naples with a
goldsmith and engraver of precious stones. In 1743, proficient
in his new calling, he moved to Rome and copied many antiques.
He attained excellence and fame, but was somewhat limited in his
field for want of early training and grounding in design.
GIOVANNI (JOHANN ANTON), the son of the foregoing, was born at
Naples, 1 Jan., 1734; died in Rome, 25 Jan., 1791. He was a
painter, gem-cutter, and experimenter in encaustic and mosaic, a
pupil of his father, and of the painter Corvi. His scholarship
and knowledge of the fine arts gave him unusual advantages.
Early in life he executed a series of historical paintings for
the Franciscans at Orioli, and the Augustinians at Braccian;
also a St. Michael for the Pauline nuns in Rome. Later he
devoted himself wholly to intaglio; he wrought gems of great
beauty and finish, which resembled the classic so closely in
style and execution that Winckelmann is said to have thought
them antiques. He was held in high regard and received
innumerable honours and lucrative commissions. Works: Hercules
strangling the Lion; Leander crossing the Hellespont; Nemesis,
Leda, Galatea, Venus, Dancers, the Vestal Tuccia, Arethusa,
Ariadne Antinous, Sappho; portraits of Pius VI and the Emperor
Joseph II; and many other subjects. His son GIACOMO was trained
to be a gem-cutter and executed many works in Milan, whither he
had gone to be near his sister Theresa, married to the poet
Vincenzo Monti. He died in early manhood.
GIUSEPPE (JOHANN JOSEPH), born in Rome, 1760; died there, 1820.
He was a son of Antonio by a second marriage and half brother to
Giovanni, who taught him the family art. Among his works are the
portrait of Alexander I of Russia; the Three Graces after
Canova; Achilles, Bacchus, Ceres, Io, Medusa, Perseus etc. He
signs in Greek, like the older Pichlers IIIHLER, using the
initial F.
LUIGI, the most distinguished of the Pichler family, was born in
Rome 31 Jan., 1773, of the second marriage of Antonio; died 13
March, 1854. Losing his father while very young, he was indebted
to his half-brother, Giovanni, for his careful education under a
private tutor and for four years of art training with the
painter De Angelis. Almost in childhood the boy had taken to
himself the tools of the gem-cutter and, as he grew older,
showed a special liking for cameo. Giovanni taught him their
common art, and connoisseurs esteem that Luigi's incisions have
even more finish, clearness, and light-gathering quality than
those of his brother. He received many commissions from the
Vatican and the Courts of France and Austria, and kept a
splendid house where music and masques were frequently given. He
made several trips to Vienna and was asked to found a school
there. In 1818 he copied in enamel five hundred gems of the
Vienna Cabinet which the emperor wished to present to the pope.
For the same city he made a complete collection of copies of the
intaglios of his father and brother, adding a set of his own,
thus bringing the historical collection of 1400 antiques up to
modern times. Venus, Cupid and Psyche, Apollo, Head of Julius
Caesar, Mars, Iris, the Day and Night of Thorwaldsen; and two
exquisite heads of Christ are some of his subjects; besides many
originals and portraits, including Giovanni Pichler's,
Winckelmann's, Joseph II, Pius VII, and Gregory XVI. Luigi
received innumerable honours from the popes and sovereigns of
his day. His last gem, a head of Ajax, which he wished to
present to Pius IX, was placed by the pope in a gold case in the
Vatican collection with the signature II. L or IIIHLER, L. The
tomb of the Pichlers is in S. Lorenzo in Lucina, Rome.
ROSSI, Vita del Cav, Giov, Pichler (Rome, 1792); MUGNA, I tre
Pichler (Vienna. 1844); ROLLETT, Die drei Meister der
Gemmoglyptik, Antonio, Giovanni und Luigi Pichler (Vienna,
1874); NAGLER in Neues allgemeines Kuenstler Lex. (Munich,
1841); BOCCARDO in Nuova Enciclopedia Italiana (Turin, 1884).
M. L. HANDLEY.
Vitus Pichler
Vitus Pichler
Distinguished canonist and controversial writer, b. at
Grosberghofen, 24 May, 1670; d. at Munich, 15 Feb., 1736. He
studied for the secular priesthood, but after ordination entered
the Society of Jesus, 28 Sept., 1696. For four years he was
professor of philosophy at Briggs and Dillingen. He was then
advanced to the chair of philosophy, controversial and
scholastic, at Augsburg. He acquired fame in the field of canon
law, which he taught for nineteen years at Dillingen, and at
Ingolstadt, where he was the successor of the illustrious
canonist, Fr. Schmalzgrueber. His latest appointment was as
prefect of higher studies at Munich. His first important
literary work was, "Lutheranismus constanter errans" (1709);
"Una et vera fides" (1710); "Theologia polemica paticularis"
(1711). In his "Cursus theologiae polemicae universae" (1713),
Pichler devotes the first part to the fundamentals of polemical
theology and the second part to the particular errors of the
reformers. It is said that he is the first writer to lay down,
clearly and separately, the distinction between fundamental
theology and other divisions of the science. He also wrote an
important work on papal infallibility, "Papatus nunquan errans
in proponendis fidei articulis" (1709). Although widely renown
as a polemical theologian, Pichler is better known as a
canonist. He published his "Candidatus juris prudentiae sacrae"
in 1722; this was followed by "Summa jurisprudentiae sacrae
universae" in 1723 sqq. He also issued "Manipulus casuum
jiridicorum" and several epitomes of his larger canonical
treatises. Pichler's controversial works were in great vogue
during the eighteenth century, while his books on canon law were
used as textbooks in many universities. His solutions to
difficult cases in jurisprudence gave a decided impetus to the
study of the canons and afforded a key to the intricate portions
of the "Corpus juris canonici". Fourteen of Pichler's works,
excluding the many editions and alterations, are enumerated.
HURTER, Nomenclator literarius, III (Innsbruck, 1895);
SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus, VI
(Brussels, 1895); de BACKER, Bibliotheque des escrevains S. J.
(Liege, 1853-76).
WILLIAM H.W. FANNING
Pickering
Ven. Thomas Pickering
Lay brother and martyr, a member of an old Westmoreland family,
b. c. 1621; executed at Tyburn, 9 May, 1679. He was sent to the
Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory at Douai, where he took
vows as a lay brother in 1660. In 1665 he was sent to London,
where, as steward or procurator to the little community of
Benedictines who served the queen's chapel royal, he became
known personally to the queen and Charles II; and when in 1675,
urged by the parliament, Charles issued a proclamation ordering
the Benedictines to leave England within a fixed time, Pickering
was allowed to remain, probably on the ground that he was not a
priest. In 1678 came the pretended revelations of Titus Oates,
and Pickering was accused of conspiring to murder the king. No
evidence except Oates's word was produced and Pickering's
innocence was so obvious that the queen publicly announced her
belief in him, but the jury found him guilty, and with two
others he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The
king was divided between the wish to save the innocent men and
fear of the popular clamour, which loudly demanded the death of
Oates's victims, and twice within a month the three prisoners
were ordered for execution and then reprieved. At length Charles
remitted the execution of the other two, hoping that this would
satisfy the people and save Pickering from his fate. The
contrary took place, however, and 26 April, 1679, the House of
Commons petitioned for Pickering's execution. Charles yielded
and the long-deferred sentence was carried out on the ninth of
May. A small piece of cloth stained with his blood is preserved
among the relics at Downside Abbey.
The Tryals of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering and John
Grove for conspiring to murder the king ... (London, 1678); An
exact abridgment of all the Trials ... relating to the popish
and pretended protestant plots in the reigns of Charles II and
James II (London, 1690), 464; Dodd, Church History of England,
III (Brussels, 1742), 318; Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary
Priests, II (London, 1742), 376; Oliver, Collections
illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion in Cornwall,
Devon, etc. (London, 1847), 500; Corker, Remonstrance of piety
and innocence (London, 1683), 178; Weldon, Chronological Notes
on the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, ed.
Dolan (Worcester, 1881), 219; Downside Review, II (London,
1883), 52-60.
G. ROGER HUDLESTON
Piconio, Bernardine A
Bernadine a Piconio
(HENRI BERNARDINE DE PICQUIGNY)
Born at Picquigny, Picardy, 1633; died in Paris, 8 December,
1709; was educated at Picquigny, and joined the Capuchins in
1649. As professor of theology he shed great lustre upon his
order; his best-known work is his "Triplex expositio epistolarum
sancti Pauli" (Paris, 1703 [French], 1706 [English, tr.
Prichard], London, 1888), which has ever been popular among
Scriptural scholars. Piconio also wrote "Triplex expositio in
sacrosancta D. N. Jesu Christi Evangelia" (Paris, 1726), and a
book of moral instructions, A complete edition of his works,
"Opera omnia Bernardini a Piconio", was published at Paris
(1870-2).
HURTER, Nomenclator literarius, II, 788.
WILLIAM C. NEVILS.
Francois Picquet
Franc,ois Picquet
A celebrated Sulpician missionary in Canada, b. at Bourg,
Bresse, France, 4 Dec., 1708; d. at Verjon, Ain, France, in
1781. He entered the seminary of Lyons (1727), where he was
ordained deacon in 1731. At the Seminary of St. Sulpice in
Paris, after winning his doctorate at the Sorbonne, he was
raised to the priesthood, and became a Sulpician. The same year
he begged to be sent to Canada, and in the month of July arrived
at Montreal, where for five years (1734-9) he was engaged in the
ministry. On the Indian mission of the Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes
(now Oka), he acquired the Algonquin and Iroquois tongues so
perfectly that he surpassed the ablest orators of these tribes.
His influence enabled him to win a large number of these savages
to the true Faith. The Lake mission became very populous:
Nipissings, Outaouois, Mohawks, and Hurons crowded alongside the
Algonquins and Iroquois. Picquet fortified this Catholic centre
against pagan tribes, and erected the Calvary which still
exists, with its well-built stations stretching along the
mountain side facing the lake. In the intercolonial war between
France and England (1743-8), the Indian allies of these two
powers came to arms. Due to the influence of their missionary
the Five Nations, hitherto allies of the English, remained
neutral, while the other savages carried on a guerilla war in
New England or served as scouts for the French troops. When
peace was restored, Picquet volunteered to establish an Indian
post on the Presentation River, whence he spread the Gospel
among the Iroquois nations, as far as the Indians of the West.
Founded on 1 June, 1749, this post became the Fort of the
Presentation in the following year; from it arose the town of
Ogdensburg, New York.
In 1751 Picquet travelled round lake Ontario to gather into his
mission as many Iroquois as possible, and succeeded in
establishing 392 families at the Presentation. In 1752 Mgr. de
Pontbriand, the last French Bishop of Quebec, baptized 132 of
them. A banner, preserved in the church of Oka, perpetuates the
souvenir of this event, and the memory of the fidelity of the
Five Nations to the cause of France, for, in the course of the
Seven years' War, it floated side by side with the Fleur-de-lis
on many a battlefield. In1753 Picquet went to France and
presented to the minister of the Navy a well-documented
memorandum concerning Canada, in which he pointed out the best
means for preserving that colony for the French Crown. Hardly
had he returned to Canada (1754) when hostilities were resumed.
He directed his savages against the English, whom he considered
as much the enemies of Catholicism as of France, and for six
years accompanied them on their expeditions and into the field
of battle. "Abbe Picquet was worth several regiments", said
Governor Duquesne of him. The English set a price on his head.
When all hope of the cause was lost, by the order of his
superiors who feared he might fall into the hands of the
English, Picquet returned to France, passing thither through
Louisiana (1760). He was engaged in the ministry in Paris till
1772. He then returned to his homeland, Bresse, and was named
canon of the cathedral of Bourg, where he died.
"Lettres edificantes et curieuses (Memoires des Indes). XXVI
(Paris, 1783), 1-63; GOSSELIN, "Le fondateur de la Presentation,
l'abbe Picquet" in "Memoires et Comptes-rendus de la Societe
royale du Canada, XII, sect. 1, (1894); BERTRAND, "Bibliotheque
sulpicienne ou Histoire litteraire di la Compagnie de
Saint-Sulpice, I (Paris, 1900), 394-401; CHAGNY, "Un defenseur
de la Nouvelle-France, Franc,ois Picquet 'le Canadien'" (Lyons,
1911).
A. FOURNET
Louis-Edouard-Desire Pie
Louis-Edouard-Desire Pie
Cardinal, born at Pontgouin, Diocese of Chartres, 1815; died at
Angouleme, 1880. He studied at the Seminary of Chartres and at
St. Sulpice, was ordained 1839, became Vicar-General of
Chartres, 1844, and Bishop of Poitiers 1849. He created many
parishes, established in his Seminary a canonical faculty of
theology, founded for the missions of the diocese the Oblates of
St. Hilary and brought the Jesuits to Poitiers and the
Benedictines to Solesmes and Liguge. To his initiative were
largely due the resumption of the provincial synods in France,
the promotion of St. Hilary's cultus and the erection of the
national shrine of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre. He is
however, best known for his opposition to modern errors, and his
championship of the rights of the Church. Regarding as futile
the compromises accepted by other Catholic leaders, he fought
alike all philosophical theories and political arrangements that
did not come up to the full traditional Christian standard. His
stand in matters philosophical was indicated as early as 1854-55
in two synodal instructions against "the errors of the present
day and of philosophy".
In politics a staunch follower of the Comte de Chambord, he
trusted but little the other regimes under which he lived. To
Napoleon III who had declared untimely certain measures
suggested by the bishop, Pie said one day: "Sire, since the time
has not come for Christ to reign, then the time has not come for
government to last". Such was the vigour with which he
stigmatized the imperial insincerity regarding the independence
of the Papal States that he was denounced to both the Council of
State and the Holy See. The former pronounced him guilty of
abuse of power, but Cardinal Antonelli valiantly stood by him.
At the Vatican Council he did not sign the postulation
petitioning for the definition of papal infallibilty, but once
it was placed on the programme of the council, he proved one of
the best exponents and defenders of it. As a reward for his
loyal services, Leo XIII made him Cardinal, 1879. Sincerely
attached to his diocese, Mgr. Pie had refused all offers of
preferment: a seat at the national Assembly, the Archbishopric
of Tours, and even the primatial See of Lyons. His works, full
of doctrine and unction, were published serially during his
lifetime at Poitiers, but were later collected into "Oeuvres
episcopales", 10 vols., Paris, s.d., and "Oeuvres sacerdotales",
2 vols., paris, s.d.
J.F. SOLLIER
Piedmont
Piedmont
(Ital. Piemonte).
A part compartimento of northern Italy, bounded on the north by
Switzerland, on the west by France, on the south by Liguria, and
on the east by Lombardy. It includes the plain of the Upper Po,
and the Alpine valleys that descend towards the plain from the
south side of the Pennine Alps, from the east side of the
Graiian and Cottian, and from the north side of the Maritime
Alps. Its name, pedes montium, from which arose Pedimontium,
came from its geographical position, enclosed on three sides by
high mountains. At the present time it includes the four Italian
provinces of Turin, Novara, Alessandria, and Cuneo. In the
Middle Ages and in antiquity the country was important chiefly
because it contained the passes over the Alps which led from
Italy to Gaul. Until the beginning of the fourth century
Christianity had made little progress. However, in the course of
the fourth and fifth centuries Christianity spread rapidly among
the people, now completely Romanized. The earliest episcopal
sees were established in this era, namely Turin, Asti, and
Aosta.
In the early Middle Ages various petty feudal states were formed
in the Piedmontese country, the most important of which were the
Marquessates of Ivrea, Suso, Saluzzo, Montferrat, and the
Countship of Turin. The counts of Savoy early made successful
attempts to establish their authority in this region. At the
beginning of the eleventh century Aosta and the territory under
its control belonged to Count Humbert I of Savoy. His son Oddo
(Otto, d. 1060) married the Marchioness Adelaide of Turin, and
in this way became possessed of the Marquessate of Susa, with
the towns of Turin and Pinerolo, the foundation of the later
Piedmont. After the death (1232) of Thomas I, Count of Savoy,
this marquessate went to a younger branch, the descendants of
Thomas II (d. 1259), son of Thomas I; Amadeus V, son of Thomas
II, is the ancestor of the present Italian royal family. These
rulers called themselves Counts of Piedmont. On account of the
position of their territories the Dukes of Savoy had a large
share in the wars for supremacy in northern Italy. Besides
extending their authority into Switzerland in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, they also gained new domains in Italy: the
lordships of Vercelli, Asti, and Cava, and the feudal suzerainty
over Montferrat. In the wars between the Emperor Charles V and
Francis I of France, Duke Charles III (d. 1553) of Piedmont lost
the greater part of his duchy. In the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis
(1559), however, his son Emmanuel Philibert (d. 1580) regained
nearly all of his father's possessions, and obtained, in
exchange for other territories, the Marquessate of Tenda and the
Principality of Oneglia.
Emmanuel Philibert's successor, Charles Emmanuel I (1580-1630),
acquired the Marquessate of Saluzzo and a large part of
Montferrat, which his son Victor Amadeus I (1630-37) was able to
retain by conceding two other lordships to France. During the
regency of the widow of Victor Amadeus I, the French Princess
Christine, the influence of France in the Duchy of Savoy was
greatly increased. Her son Charles Emmanuel II (d. 1675) sought
in vain to escape this dominating control. Victor Amadeus II
(1675-1730) joined the great alliance against France in the War
of the Spanish Succession. By the victory of Turin in 1706
Prince Eugene drove out the French troops that had made a sudden
descent upon Piedmont, thus ridding the duke of his enemies. As
a reward for joining the alliance the duke received by the Peace
of Utrecht of 1713 the Marquessate of Montferrat, the City of
Alessandria, and the Districts of Val Sesia and Lomellina, so
that the part of his territories situated in Italy had
essentially the same extent as the present Department of
Piedmont. Outside of these new territories he was granted the
Island of Sicily, which, however, he lost again when Spanish
troops attacked the island in 1718. In 1720 as compensation for
this loss he received the island of Sardinia. He now assumed the
title of King of Sardinia; besides the island, the kingdom
included Savoy and Piedmont on the mainland. In the Polish and
Austrian wars of succession the next king, Charles Emmanuel III
(as king, Charles Emmanuel I, 1730-73), acquired the additional
Italian districts of Tortona and Novara, also Anghiera, Bobbio,
and a part of the principality of Pavia. His son Victor Amadeus
III (1773-96) was a weak man of little importance. During his
reign the storms caused by the French Revolution swept over his
kingdom. Napoleon's victories obliged him in 1796 to cede Savoy
and Nice to France, and his son and successor Charles Emmanuel
II (1796-1802) lost all his territories on the mainland, which,
together with Liguria and Parma, were united to Fance. The king
abdicated, entered the Society of Jesus, and in 1802 resigned
the crown to his brother Victor Emmanuel I. At first the latter
resided in Sardinia.
Until the seventeenth century the position of the Church in
Piedmont was a satisfactory one; no restriction was placed upon
its activities. The country contained numerous dioceses; of
these Aosta was a suffragan of Tarentaise, Nice of Embrun, and
the other dioceses on Italian soil were suffragans of Milan. In
1515 Turin, where the Dukes of Savoy lived, was made an
archdiocese with the two suffragan sees of Ivrea and Mondovi. As
lord chancellor and first secretary of state the Archbishop of
Turin was by law a member of the council of state. The ducal
family was very religious, and until the end of the seventeenth
century maintained close relations with the Papal See, which had
established a permanent nunciature at Turin in the sixteenth
century, while an agent of the Government of Piedmont resided at
Rome. For some of their domains the dukes were vassals of the
Holy See, but this relation caused no difficulties. There was a
large body of clergy, and monasteries were numerous. There were
also two religious orders of knights, that of St. Lazarus, an
order of hospitallers for the care of the sick, especially
lepers, and that of St. Mauritius, which had been founded by
Amadeus VIII in 1434 and confirmed in 1572 by Gregory XII. The
same pope confirmed the union of the two orders, of which the
duke was the perpetual grand master. The original purpose of
these knightly orders was, however, very soon lost sight of; in
recent times they have been changed into a secular decoration.
Duke Charles Emmanuel I was very zealous in the struggle against
Protestantism, and both he and his two successors took energetic
measures against the growth of the Waldensians. However,
Emmanuel Philibert made the execution of the judgments of the
ecclesiastical Inquisition dependent on the consent of the
senate and judicial investigation by the Government.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century the dukes, who had
become absolute rulers, and their administrative officials began
to suppress the liberties of the Church in imitation of France.
They even interfered in the purely ecclesiastical government of
the Church. Thus during the administration of Victor Amadeus,
who was the actual ruler from 1684, violent dissensions with the
Holy See arose and seriously injured religious life, especially
because large numbers of dioceses and higher ecclesiastical
benefices remained vacant for a long period. Lengthy
negotiations were carried on with Rome. An edict issued by
Victor Amadeus in 1694 for the benefit of the Waldensians was
rejected at Rome, because it annulled the old law for the
protection of the Catholic Church. The duke took the most severe
measures against this Roman decree. The senate forbade its
publication under heavy penalties, so that it could not be
executed, and the tribunal of the Inquisition of Piedmont lost
nearly all its importance. The Dioceses of Casale, Acqui, and
Ventimiglia included parts of the territory of Piedmont,
although the bishops did not rside in the duchy; this was
regarded as a great grievance. The duke wished to force these
bishops to appoint episcopal vicars for the supervision of those
of his subjects belonging to their dioceses; this the bishops
refused to do. Whereupon the landed property in Piedmont
belonging to the Diocese of Nice was sequestrated; this led the
bishop, after three years of unsuccessful negotiations, to
excommunicate the secular officials who had carried out the
ducal decree. The senate forbade the recognition of the sentence
of excommunication under the severest penalties, for the laity
the penalty of death, and commanded the priests to grant the
sacraments to the excommunicated. This last command, however,
was recalled by the duke as too extreme a measure against
ecclesiastical authority.
Victor Amadeus now claimed the entire right of presentation to
all the sees and to all the abbeys in his territories granted by
the pope in consistory, on ground of a privilege conferred by
Pope Nicholas V in 1451 upon Duke Louis of Savoy, whereby the
pope, before filling sees and abbacies, would ask for the
opinion and consent of the duke in regard to the persons
nominated. This privilege had been confirmed on various
occasions during the sixteenth century. Rome was not willing to
acknowledge the privilege in this enlarged form. The duke had
also issued an edict by which a secular judge was not to grant
permission to those desiring to enter the clergy until he had
fully informed himself concerning the ability of the candidate,
the number of parishes in the locality, and of the priests and
monks there, and the nature of the property to be assigned to
the candidate for his support. In 1700 a bitter dispute arose
between the Archbishop of Turin and the ducal delegation, when
the archbishop by a decree declared invalid the ecclesiastical
arrangements proposed by the laity against the decrees of the
Apostolic See. However, the bishops, supported by the nuncio,
followed the instructions of the pope in all ecclesiastical
questions. Further disputes also arose concerning the
testamentary competency of regulars, a right which was denied
the regular clergy by the Government, and as to the rights of
the pope in the fiefs of the Roman Church that were possessed by
the dukes. These questions were exhaustively examined at Rome,
and the advocate of the consistory, Sardini, was sent to Turin
to negotiate the matters; but the agreement adjusting the
difficulty that was obtained by him was not accepted at Rome.
New troubles constantly arose when the duke confiscated the
revenues of benefices accruing during their vacancy and
abrogated the spolia (property of ecclesiastics deceased
intestate) of ecclesiastical benefices. The Government appointed
an administrator of its own for the care and administration of
the estates of vacant benefices, but he was not recognized by
the bishops. Secular approval of ecclesiastical acts and
ordinances was made necessary in a continually increasing number
of cases. New negotiations, undertaken in 1710 at Rome by Count
de Gubernatis, produced no results. The only agreement reached
was in regard to the administrator of vacant benefices, who was
also appointed the Apostolic administrator for this purpose. In
this form the office of the Apostolic-royal steward continued to
exist.
When the Island of Sardinia was granted to Piedmont in 1720 a
new conflict arose, as the pope claimed to be the sovereign of
the island. The basis of this was that Boniface VIII had
invested the King of Aragon with the island under the condition
that it should never be separated from the crown of Aragon.
Consequently the demand was made upon the new King of Sardinia
that he should seek papal investiture. As Victor Amadeus refused
to do this, the pope rejected the arrangements for filling the
episcopal sees and ecclesiastical benefices made by the king,
who also claimed all the rights of patronage exercised by the
Spanish sovereign. As a consequence most of the sees on the
islands were without incumbents, which increased the
difficulties. Benedict XIII (1724-30) sought to bring about a
reconciliation in order to put an end to the injury inflicted on
religious life. In Turin the necessity of an accommodation was
also realized, and the king sent the adroit and skillful
Marquese d'Ormea to Rome to prepare the way for the
negotiations. The peace-loving pope made large concessions,
although the king made still further encroachments upon the
rights of the Church. The negotiations were carried on by a
congegation composed of four cardinals and the prelate Merlini.
Several points were adjusted, especially the king's right of
presentation to the bishoprics and abbacies, while others were
discussed, particularly the immunity of the Church, the right of
the pope to claim the spolia, also the right to charge
ecclesiastical revenues with pensions. Most of the difficulties
were finally adjusted, and an agreement was signed in 1727, so
that the vacant sees could now be filled and ecclesiastical
administration resumed. King Charles Emmanuel III (1730-73) made
new conventions with Benedict XIV (1740-59), who had formerly
supported the Marquess d'Ormea in his negotiations, and had
always maintained friendly relations with him. By two
conventions made in 1741 the King of Sardinia was granted the
Apostolic vicariate for the papal fiefs on condition of paying a
quit-rent, and the questions of the ecclesiastical benefices,
the revenues of benefices during vacancy, and the administration
of these vacant benefices were adjusted. Notwithstanding his
friendliness, the papal commissioner had a very difficult
position to maintain in his relations with the president of the
senate, Caissotti. Finally on 6 Jan., 1742, the pope issued
instructions to the bishops, in which both sides had concurred;
in these it was made the duty of foreign bishops to appoint
vicars for the parts of their dioceses in the territory of
Piedmont, ecclesiastical jurisdiction was curtailed, and the
landed property of the Church that had been obtained after 1620
was made subject to the ordinary civil taxes. In 1750 the pope
resigned various revenues that the Apostolic See derived from
Piedmont in return for a very small indemnity. Charles Emmanuel
III now remained on the best of terms with Rome notwithstanding
isolated difficulties and disputes which still arose. Merlini
was once more received at Turin as nuncio, and the piously-
inclined king sought to promote the interests of religion, to
protect Christian discipline, and to support the rights of the
Church in other countries.
The last period of the history of the Kingdom of Sardinia began
after the Napoleonic era. In 1814- 15 Victor Emmanuel I regained
Piedmont with the territories of Genoa (Liguria) and Grenoble.
The Government again sought to base the administration on the
old political principles of the period before the French
Revolution, while a large part of the citizens of the country
were filled with ideas of political independence and Liberalism,
and the revolutionary secret society, the Carbonari, was at
work. When in 1821 a military insurrection broke out, the king
abdicated in favour of his brother Charles Felix (1821-31).
Before Charles Felix arrived the country was administered by
Charles Albert, the heir- presumptive to the throne, who was a
member of the Savoy-Carignan branch of the family. Charles at
once established the Spanish constitution of 1812 and summoned a
Liberal minisstry. However, Charles Felix crushed the Liberal
opposition with the aid of Austrian troops and reestablished
former administrative conditions. At his death the direct line
of the dynasty of Savoy was extinct, and he was succeeded by
Charles Albert of Savoy- Carignan (1821-49). The king gave the
country a constitution in 1848, summoned a Liberal ministry, and
assumed the leadership of the movement for the national unity of
Italy. This led to a war with Austria in which he was defeated
at Novara, and consequently was obliged to abdicate on 4 Nov.,
1849, in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II (1849-78). Count
Camillo de Cavour (d. 6 June, 1861) was soon made the head of
the administration. Journeys in France and England had imbued
Cavour with ideas of political and parliamentary freedom; from
1848 he had sought to spread his opinions by publishing with the
aid of Balbo, Santa Rosa, and others the journal "Il
Risorgimento". On 4 Nov., 1852, he was made president of the
ministry; he now sought by the economic development of the
country and by diplomatic relations, especially on the occasion
of the Crimean War, and at the Congress of Paris in 1856, where
the "Italian" question was raised, to prepare for war with
Austria.
In a second agreement with Napoleon III made at Plombieres on 20
July, 1858, he gained the support of the French emperor by
promising to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In this way Victor
Emmanuel II was able in 1859 to begin war against Austria with
the aid of Napoleon, and the two allies defeated the Austrian
army at Magenta (4 June) and at Solferino (24 June). At the same
time a revolution broke out in central Italy that had been
planned by the followers of Mazzini, and the national union
founded by him in Piedmont. Tuscany, the duchies, and the
districts ruled by delegation received Piedmontese
administrators. In his choice of means the only principle
followed by Cavour was to use whatever might prove advantageous
to him. His connexion with men like Mazzini, Garibaldi, and
others shows the lack of principle in his conduct. Piedmont
adopted the cause of the revolution. In the Peace of Zurich, 10
Nov., 1859, it was stipulated that Lombardy would be given to
Piedmont. In 1860 the people of Savoy and Nice voted for union
with France, so that these territories now became a part of
France, and the royal dynasty of Piedmont resigned its native
land of Savoy. As compensation for this loss Piedmont received
Tuscany and Emilia. On 2 April, 1860, the "National Parliament"
was opened at Turin; the parliament, asserting the principle of
nationality, demanded "Italy for the Italians". Soon other
Italian domains were absorbed, and on 17 March, 1861, Victor
Emmanuel II assumed the title of King of Italy (see Italy),
whereby Piedmont and the Kingdom of Italy were merged into the
united Kingdom of Italy. On 29 March, 1861, Cavour announced
that Rome was the future capital of united Italy.
After the readjustment of ecclesiastical conditions in 1817
there were seven Church provinces in the Kingdom of Sardinia
that had been formed and enlarged in the period following the
Napoleonic era. These archdioceses were: in Piedmont, Turin with
10 suffragans, to which in 1860 an eleventh, Aosta (which had
belonged to Chambery), was added; Vercelli with 5 suffragans; in
Luguria, Genoa with 6 suffragans; in Savoy, Chambery with 4
suffragans (after the withdrawal of Aosta only 3); on the Island
of Sardinia the three Archdioceses of Cagliari, Oristano, and
Sassari, with 8 suffragans. Both the Liberal movement and the
intrigues of the revolutionary party in Piedmont were in every
way inimical to the Church. In March, 1848, the expulsion of the
Jesuits was begun in the harshest manner. In October a law
regarding instruction was issued that was adverse to the Church.
In the next year began the hostilities directed against
Archbishop Luigi Franconi of Turin and other bishops. The
Archbishops of Turin and Sassari were even imprisoned. In 1850
the ecclesiastical immunities were suppressed and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction was limited. In 1851 the Government regulated
theological instruction without the concurrence of the Church;
in 1852 civil marriage was introduced; in 1853 the office of the
Apostolic royal-steward was completely secularized; in 1854 laws
were issued directed against the monasteries; in 1855 the
ecclesiastical academy of Superga was suppressed; in 1856 and
the following years oppressive measures were issued against
parish priests and parish administration, such as confiscation
of the greater part of the lands of the Church. Using the party
cry of a "free Church in a free state", Cavour and his
confederates robbed the Church in many directions of its
essential rights and freedom, as well as of its rightful
possessions. The same spirit of hostility to the Church was
shown towards the papacy; the nunciature at Turin was
suppressed. Thus the union of Italy was carried on, even by
Piedmont, that had allied itself to revolutionary elements
hostile to the Church, in a manner inimical throughout to the
Church and religion. This hostility continued to control the
official measures as well as the entire course of the Italian
Government.
Monumenta historiae patriae, I sqq. (Turin, 1836); Carutti,
Regesta comitum Sabaudiae, marchionum in Italia, usque ad an.
1258 (Turin, 1889); Dibrario, Operette e frammenti storici
(Florence, 1856); Idem, Origini e progresso delle istituzioni
della monarchia di Savoia (2nd ed., 2 vols., Florence, 1869);
Carutti, Storia del regno di Vittorio Amadeo II (Turin, 1856);
Ricotti, Storia della monarchia Piemontese (6 vols., Florence,
1851-60); Gabotto, Storia del Piemonte 1292-1349 (Rome, 1894);
Gallenga, History of Piedmont (3 vols., London, 1854-55);
Brofferio Storia del Piemonte dal 1814 a giorni nostri (5 vols,
Turin, 1849-52); Vallauri, Storia delle Universit`a degli studi
in Piemonte (Turin, 1845); Savio, Gli antichi vescovi d'Italia:
I. Il Piemonte (Turin, 1898); Meyranesius, Pedemontium sacrum, I
sq. (Turin, 1834-); HergenrOether, Piemonts Unterhandlungen mit
dem hl. Stuhle im 18. Jahrh. in Katholische Studien, III
(Wuerzburg, 1876); Colomiatti, Msgre. Luigi dei marchesi
Franconi, archivescove di Torino 1832-1862 (Turin, 1902);
Bianchi, Il conte Camillo Cavour (3rd ed., Turin, 1863); Kraus,
Cavour. Die Erhebung Italiens im 19. Jahrh. in Weltgeschichte in
Charakterbildern (Mainz, 1902); Manno, Bibliografia storica
degli stati della monarchia di Savoia (8 vols., Turin, 1884-
1908).
J. P. KIRSCH
Piel
Peter Piel
A pioneer in the movement for reform of church music, b. at
Kessewick, near Bonn, 12 Aug., 1835; d. at Boppard, on the
Rhine, 21 Aug., 1904. Educated in the seminary for teachers at
Kempen, he was instructed in music by Albert Michael Jopken
(1828-78), and became professor of music at the Seminary of
Boppard in 1868, a position which he held until his death.
During all the years of his incumbency Piel displayed
extraordinary activity as composer, teacher, and critic. He
wrote a number of masses, both for equal and mixed voices,
numerous motets, antiphons in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary
for four and eight voices, Magnificats in the eight Gregorian
modes, and a Te Deum, all of which have enjoyed great vogue.
Piel's compositions reveal the resourceful contrapuntist, and
are of classic purity of style. His trios, preludes, and
postludes for the organ are models of finish and smoothness. It
is as a teacher, however, and through the large number of
distinguished musicians whom he formed that Piel exerted the
greatest influence. His "Harmonielehre" has passed through a
number of editions and is a standard book of instruction in
liturgical music. In 1887 he received from the German Government
the title of Royal Director of Music.
Hoeveler, Peter Piel (Duesseldorf, 1907); Caecilienverein's
Catalog (Ratisbon, 1870).
JOSEPH OTTEN
Pie Pelicane, Jesu, Domine
Pie Pelicane, Jesu, Domine
The sixth quatrain of Adoro Te Devote, sometimes used as a
separate hymn at Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Pierius
Pierius
A priest and probably head master of the catechetical school at
Alexandria conjointly with Achillas, flourished while Theonas
was bishop of that city; died at Rome after 309. His skill as an
exegetical writer and as a preacher gained for him the
appellation, "Origen the Younger". Philip of Side, Photius, and
others assert that he was a martyr. However, since St. Jerome
assures us that he survived the Diocletian persecution and spent
the rest of his life at Rome, the term "martyr" can only mean
that he underwent sufferings, not death, for his Faith, The
Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 4 November. He wrote a
work (biblion) comprising twelve treatises or sermons (logoi),
in some of which he repeats the dogmatic errors attributed by
some authors to Origen, such as the subordination of the Holy
Ghost to the Father and the Son, and the pre-existence of human
souls. His known sermons are: one on the Gospel of St. Luke (eis
to kata Loukan); an Easter sermon on Osee (eis to pascha kai ton
Osee); a sermon on the Mother of God (peri tes theotokou); a few
other Easter sermons; and a eulogy on St. Pamphilus, who had
been one of his disciples (eis ton bion tou hagiou Pamphilou).
Only some fragments of his writings are extant. They were edited
by Routh in "Reliquiae Sacrae", III, 423-35, in P.G., X, 241-6,
and, with newly discovered fragments, by Boor in "Texte und
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur", V,
ii ((Leipzig, 1888), 165-184. For an English translation see
Salmond in "Ante-Nicene Fathers" (New York, 1896), 157.
RADFORD, Three Teachers of Alexandria (Cambridge, 1908);
BARDENHEWER, Gesch. der altchrist. Lit., II (Freiburg, 1903),
198-203; IDEM, Patrologie, tr. SHAHAN (Freiburg, 1908), 158;
HARNACK, Gesch. der altchrist. Lit., I (Leipzig, 1893), 439-44;
Acta SS., II Nov., 254-64.
MICHAEL OTT
Blessed Pierre de Castelnau
Blessed Pierre de Castelnau
Born in the Diocese of Montpellier, Languedoc, now Department of
Herault, France; died 15 Jan., 1208. He embraced the
ecclesiastical state, and was appointed Archdeacon of Maguelonne
(now Montpellier). Pope Innocent III sent him (1199) with two
Cistercians as his legate into the middle of France, for the
conversion of the Albigenses. Some time later, about 1202, he
received the Cistercian habit at Fontfroide, near Narbonne. He
was again confirmed as Apostolic legate and first inquisitor. He
gave himself untiringly to his work, strengthening those not yet
infected with error, reclaiming with tenderness those who had
fallen but manifested good will, and pronouncing ecclesiastical
censures against the obdurate. Whilst endeavouring to reconcile
Raymond, Count of Toulouse, he was, by order of the latter,
transpierced with a lance, crying as he fell, "May God forgive
you as I do." His feast is celebrated in the Cistercian order,
by one part on 5 March, and by the other on 14 March. He is also
honoured as a martyr in the Dioceses of Carcassonne and Treves.
His relics are interred in the church of the ancient Abbey of
St-Gilles.
Breviarium cisterciense (5 March); CHALEMOT, Series sanctorum et
Beatorum s.o.c. (Paris, 1670); Annus cisterciensis (Wettingen,
1682); HENRIQUEZ, Menologium cisterciense (Antwerp, 1630);
CAUVET, Etude historique sur Fontfroide (Montpellier, 1875);
CARETTO, Santorale cisterciense, II (Turin, 1708).
EDMOND M. OBRECHT
Pierre de Maricourt
Pierre de Maricourt
Surnamed PETER THE PILGRIM (Petrus Peregrinus)
A physician of the Middle Ages. Under the name of "Magister
Petrus de Maharne-curia, Picardus", he is quoted by Roger Bacon
in his "Opus Majus" as the only author of his time who possessed
an exact knowledge of perspective. According to Bacon he came
from Picardy, and the village of Maricourt is situated in the
Department of the Somme, near Peronne. He has left a remarkable
treatise on the magnet, "Epistola Petri Peregrini de Maricourt
ad Sygerum de Foucaucourt, militem, de magnete"; Syger de
Foucaucourt was a friend and neighbour of the author, his domain
bordering on that of Maricourt, It is dated 8 August, 1269, and
bears the legend: Actum in castris, in obsidione Lucerioe (done
in camp during the siege of Luceria), whence we know that the
author was in the army of Charles of Anjou, who, in 1269, laid
siege to the city of Lucera or Nocera, the only detail of his
life known. The sobriquet "Pilgrim" would lead us to suppose, in
addition, that he was a crusader, The "Epistola de magnete" is
divided into two parts. The first, a model of inductive
reasoning based on definite experiences correctly interpreted,
sets forth the fundamental laws of magnetism. His part seems to
have been, not the discovery of these laws, but their
presentation in logical order. In the second division less
admirable, an attempt is made to prove that with the help of
magnets it is possible to realize perpetual motion, From
medieval times the work was exceedingly popular; in 1326 Thomas
Bradwardine quotes it in his "Tractatus de proportionibus", and
after his time the masters of Oxford University make frequent
use of it. The manuscripts containing it are very numerous, and
it has been printed a number of times. The first edition was
issued at Augsburg, 1558, by Achilles Gasser. In 1572 Jean
Taisner or Taisnier published from the press of Johann Birkmann
of Cologne a work entitled "Opusculum perpetua memoria
dignissimum, de natura magnetis et ejus effectibus, Item de motu
continuo", In this celebrated piece of plagiarism Taisnier
presents, as though from his own pen, the "Epistola de magnete"
of Pierre de Maricourt and a treatise on the fall of bodies by
Gianbattista Benedetti, The "Epistola de magnete" was later
issued by Libri (Histoire des sciences mathematiques en Italie,
II, Paris, 1838; note v, pp. 487-505), but this edition was full
of defects; correct editions were published by P. D. Timoteo
Bertelli (in "Bulletino di bibliografia e di storia delle
scienze matematiche e fisiche pubblicata da B. Boncampagni", I,
1868, pp. 70-80) and G. Hellmann ("Neudrucke von Schriften und
Karten ueber Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus, No. 10, Rara
magnetica", Berlin, 1898). A translation into English has been
made by Silvanus P. Thompson ("Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt,
Epistle to Sygerus of Foucaucourt, Soldier, concerning the
Magnet", Chiswick Press, s. d.), also by Brother Arnold ("The
Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, a.d. 1269", with
introductory note by Brother Potamian, New York, 1904).
BERTELLI, Sopra Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt e la sua Epistola
de Magnete in Bulletino publicata da B. Boncompagni, I (1868),
1-32; IDEM, Sulla Epistola di Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt e
sopra alcuni trovati e teorie magnetiche del secolo XIII, ibid.,
65-99, 319-420; IDEM, Intorno a due codici Vaticani della
Epistola de magnete di Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt ed alle
prime osservazioni della declinazione magnetica, ibid., IV
(1871), 303-31; BONCOMPAGNI, Intorno alle edizioni della
Epistola de magnete di Pietro Peregrino de Maricourt, ibid.,
332-39.
PIERRE DUHEM.
Jean Pierron
Jean Pierron
A missionary, born at Dun-sur-Meuse, France, 28 Sept., 1631;
date and place of death unknown. He entered the Jesuit novitiate
at Nancy, 21 Nov., 1650, and after studying at Pont-`a-Mousson
he became an instructor at Reims and Verdun; he completed the
curriculum in 1665 and spent two years more as an instructor at
Metz. On his arrival in Canada in June, 1667, he was sent to the
Iroquois mission of Sainte-Marie. in a letter written the same
year he described his impressions of the country, the
characteristics and customs of the savages, and expressed an
admiration for the Iroquois language, which reminded him of
Greek. He arrived at Tionontoguen, the principal village of the
Mohawks, on 7 Oct., 1668, where he replaced Father Fremin. These
people were one of the most flourishing of the Iroquois nations,
valiant and proud warriors, and difficult to convert. Father
Pierron made use of pictures which he painted himself in order
to make his teachings more impressive, and invented a game by
means of which the indians learned the doctrines and devotions
of the Church; he taught the children to read and write. He
spent one winter in Acadia to ascertain if it were possible to
re-establish the missions which had been expelled in 1655, and
travelled through New England, Maryland (which at that time had
a Catholic governor, Charles Calvert), and Virginia; returning
to the Iroquois, he worked among them until 1677 and went to
France in the following year. He was a man of rare virtue, and
during all his missionary career fought against a natural
repugnance to the Iroquois.
Ed. THWAITES, Jesuit Relations (Cleveland, 1896-1901); CAMPBELL,
Pioneer Priests of North America (New York, 1909).
J. ZEVELY.
Philippe Pierson
Philippe Pierson
Born at Ath, Hainaut (Belgium), 4 January, 1642; died at
Lorette, Quebec, 1688. At the age of eighteen he entered the
Jesuit novitiate at Tournai, and pursued his studies at Louvain,
Lille, and Douay. He was an instructor at Armentieres and
Bethune before he went to Canada in 1666, where he taught
grammar in the college at Quebec, and presented a successful
Latin play on the Passion of Our Lord. After studying theology
for two years he was ordained in 1669, then worked among the
Indians at Prairie de la Madeleine and Sillery. From 1673 to
1683 he did excellent work by spreading Christianity among the
Hurons of the Makinac mission. In a letter from St. Ignace he
described how his church increased in numbers and grew strong in
faith. Later, from 1683 he was a missionary among the Sioux west
of Lake Superior, and remained as such until his death.
Ed. THWAITES, Jesuit Relations (Cleveland, 1896-1901).
J. ZEVELY.
Pietism
Pietism
Pietism is a movement within the ranks of Protestantism,
originating in the reaction against time fruitless Protestant
orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, and aiming at the revival
of devotion and practical Christianity. Its appearance in the
German Lutheran Church, about 1670, is connected with the name
of Spener. Similar movements had preceded it in the Reformed
Church of the Netherlands (Gisbert Voetius, Jodocus von
Lodensteyn) and on the German Lower Rhine (Gerhard Tersteegen).
Among German Lutherans the mystics Valentin Weigel and Johannes
Arndt and the theologians Johann Gerhard, Johann Matthias
Meyfart, and Theophilus Grossgebauer may be regarded as
precursors of Spener.
Philipp Jakob Spener, born in 1635 at Rappoltsweiler in Alsace,
had been from his earliest years, under the influence of the
pious Countess Agathe von Rappoltstein, familiar with such
ascetical works as Arndt's "Sechs Buecher vom wahren
Christenthum". At Geneva, whither he went as student in 1660, he
was profoundly impressed by Jean de Labadie, then active as a
Reformed preacher, but later a separatist fanatic. Spener found
his first sphere of practical work at Frankfort on the Main,
where he was appointed pastor and senior in 1666. His sermons,
in which he emphasized the necessity of a lively faith and the
sanctification of daily life, brought him many adherents among
the more serious of his hearers; but recognizing the
impossibility of leading the people at large to the desired
degree of perfection, he conceived the idea of an ecclesiola in
ecclesia, established in 1670 the so-called "Collegia pietatis"
(whence the name Pietists), i. e. private assemblies in his own
house for pious reading and mutual edification, and wrote "Pia
desideria oder herzliches Verlangen nach gottgefaelliger
Besserung der wahren evangelischen Kirche" (1675). After
criticizing the prevalent abuses, he makes six suggestions for
the improvement of ecclesiastical conditions: In view of the
inadequacy of sermons for the purpose, private gatherings should
be held to secure among the people a more thorough acquaintance
with the Word of God; the idea of a universal priesthood, which
had not attained its rightful significance in the previous
development of the Lutheran Church, was to be more fully
realized; with the knowledge of Christianity was to be closely
joined the exercise of Charity and the spirit of forgiveness;
the attitude towards unbelievers should be determined upon not
by a controversial spirit, but by the charitable desire of
winning these souls; the theological course should be reformed
in order to spur the students not only to diligence, but also to
a devout life, in which the professors should set the example;
in preaching, rhetoric should be abandoned and stress laid upon
inculcating faith and a living, practical Christianity. Spener
further defended his ideas of a universal priesthood in "Das
geistliche Priesterthum, aus goettlichem Wort kuerzlich
beschrieben" (1677). His "Pia Desideria" won him many adherents,
but also aroused violent opposition among Lutheran theologians.
A wider sphere of activity opened to Spener in 1686 when he was
appointed court preacher at Dresden. During the same year,
August Hermann Francke, Paul Anton, and Johann Kaspar Sehade
established at Leipzig, along the line of Spener's ideas, the
"Collegia philobiblica", for the practical and devotional
explanation of Holy Scripture, which attracted large numbers of
masters and students. The Pietist movement at Leipzig, however,
came to an end a few years later owing to the opposition of the
theological faculty, headed by Professor Johann Benedict
Carpzov. The Pietists were accused of false doctrines, contempt
for public worship and the science of theology, and separatistic
tendencies. The "Collegia philobiblica" was dissolved in 1690
and the leaders of the movement, forbidden to lecture on
theology, left Leipzig. Spener, who had fallen into disfavour
with the Elector of Saxony, removed in 1691 to Berlin, where he
was appointed provost to the church of St. Nicholas and
counsellor to the consistory. Pietism was also attacked in
Carpzov's Easter programme of 1691 and the anonymous treatise
"Imago Pietismi" (1691), probably the work of Pastor Roth of
Halle. A lively exchange of controversial pamphlets ensued.
Spener's call to Berlin was of great significance for Pietism,
as he here enjoyed the full confidence of Prince Frederick III
(later King Frederick I of Prussia) and wielded a decisive
influence in the selection of professors for the theological
faculty of the recently founded University of Halle. Francke,
who had been working at Erfurt since his departure from Leipzig,
went to Halle as professor and pastor in January, 1692; his
friend, Joachim Justus Breithaupt, had preceded him in October,
1691, as first professor of theology and director of the
theological seminary. Somewhat later Paul Anton, formerly a
colleague of Francke's at Leipzig, also received a chair at
Halle. Professors in other faculties, like the celebrated jurist
Christian Thomasius, organizer of the new university, were at
least on friendly terms with the Pietist theologians, even if
they did not share their religious beliefs. Thus Hale became the
centre of the Pietistic movement in Lutheran Germany.
Francke ranks high also in the history of education, owing to
the establishment (1695) of his orphan asylum, around which he
grouped various institutions suited to the needs of teachers and
pupils. He also turned his attention to foreign missions; the
Pietists promoted the dissemination of the Bible through the
establishment (1710), by Freiherr von Canstein, of a bible house
at the Halle orphan asylum. The Pietists on the whole preserved
the doctrinal content of Lutheran dogma, but treated systematic
theology and philosophy as quite secondary. in preaching against
the prevalent laxity of morals they relegated to the background
the Lutheran dogma of justification by faith alone and insisted
on a life of active devotion, and the doctrine of repentance,
conversion, and regeneration. The Pietist conventicles sought to
further the "penitential conflict" leading to regeneration by
prayer, devout reading, and exhortations. The so-called
"adiaphora", theatres, dancing, etc., were regarded as sinful.
After the foundation of the University of Halle the campaign
against Pietism was pursued with increased vigour by the
orthodox Lutherans, notably Samuel Schelwig at Danzig, Valentin
Alberti at Leipzig, and the theological faculty of Wittenberg,
with Johann Deutschmann at its head. Later came Valentin Ernst
Loescher (died 1747), against whom Pietism was defended by
Joachim Lange, professor at Halle. During these struggles the
founders of Pietism had passed away, Spener in 1705, Francke in
1727, Breithaupt in 1732, and then followed the period of
decline.
Meanwhile, despite opposition, the influence of Pietism had
spread, and its prestige, with the support of King Frederick I
and Frederick William I, survived Francke's death. Frederick
William I decreed (1729) that all theologians desiring
appointments in Prussia should study at Halle for two years; but
the favour shown the Pietists ceased with the accession of
Frederick II. Besides Halle, the Universities of Koenigsberg and
Giessen aided in the spread of Pietism. It had also a powerful
patron in Frederick IV, King of Denmark, who encouraged the
movement in his country, sent Danish students of theology to
Halle, and requested Francke to recommend missionaries for the
Danish East Indian possessions. At Wuertemberg Pietism took on a
special character; while holding in essentials to the ideas of
Spener and Francke, it was more moderate, adhered more closely
to the organization and theology of the Lutheran Church, kept
clear of eccentricities, had more scholarly interests, and
flourished longer than the Pietism of Northern Germany. Francke,
who had travelled through Wuertemberg in 1717, was held in great
veneration, while there was no intercourse at all with the later
representatives of Pietism in Northern Germany. The leader of
the movement at Wuertemberg was Johann Albrecht Bengel (died
1752), who, like many other Wuertemberg theologians, had studied
at Halle; with him were associated Eberhard Weismann and
Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. A separatistic community which
grew out of Pietism was the "Herrnhueter, whose founder, Count
von Zinzendorf, had been educated in Francke's institutions at
Halle. In Switzerland, Pietism was widespread, especially in the
cantons of Bern, Zurich, Basle, and Waadt.
So far as it followed the paths traced by Spener and Francke,
Pietism produced some beneficial results. In the subjective bias
of the whole movement, however, there lay from the beginning the
danger of many abuses. It often degenerated into fanaticism,
with alleged prophecies, visions, and mystical states (e. g.,
bloody sweats). This decadent Pietism led to the formation of
various independent communities, some fanatic (Nillenarians,
etc.), others criminal, indulging in lewd orgies (e. g. the
Wittgenstein scandals and the Buttlar gang). Among the
theologians who, starting as Pietists, advanced to an
independent position, quite at variance with organized
Protestantism, the most conspicuous were Gottfried Arnold (died
1714), representative of a fanatical mysticism, and his
disciple, Johann Konrad Dippel, who attacked all forms of
orthodox Christianity. Though the founders of Pietism had no
idea of forsaking the basis of Lutheran dogma, the Pietistic
movement, with its treatment of dogma as a secondary matter and
its indifference to variations in doctrine, prepared the ground
for the theological rationalism of the period of enlightenment.
Johann Salomo Semler, the father of rationalism, came from the
Halle school of Pietism, and his appointment as professor of
theology at the University of Halle in 1752 opened the way to
the ascendancy of rationalism, against which the devout Pietists
were as powerless as the representatives of Protestant
orthodoxy. Pietism revived in Protestant Germany and Protestant
Switzerland, early in the nineteenth century, as a reaction
against the rationalistic enlightenment and a response to more
deeply felt religious needs. A far-reaching activity along these
lines was exerted in many parts of Germany and Switzerland by
Freifrau von Kruedener by means of her sermons on penance. Tract
societies and associations for propagating home missions did
much to promote the spirit of Pietism, On the other hand, along
with good results, this movement again degenerated into mystical
fanaticism and sectarianism (e. g., the "sanctimonious
hypocrites" at Koenigsberg about 1835; the adherents of
Schoenherr, Ebel, and Diestel). There are also connecting links
between the subjectivism of the Pietists and the theological
liberalism of Albrecht Ritschl and his school, whose insistence
on interior religious experience in the form of feeling is a
basic idea of Pietism, although the Ritschlian school is opposed
by devout Pietists as well as by Orthodox Lutherans.
SCHMID, Die Gesch. des Pietismus (Noerdlingen, 1863); THOLUCK,
Gesch. des Rationalismus. I. Gesch. des Pietismus u. des ersten
Stadiums der Aufklaerung (Berlin, 1865); RITSCHL, Gesch. des
Pietismus (Bonn, 1880-86); SACHSSE, Ursprung u. Wesen des
Pietismus (Wiesbaden, 1884); HUeBENER, Ueber den Pietismus in
Verhandlungen der 25. Jahresversammlung der Synode der ev.-luth.
Freikirche in Sachsen (Zwickau, 1901), 17-156; HADORN, Gesch.
des Pietismus in den schweizerischen reformierten Kirchen
(Constance, 1901); RENNER, Lebensbilder aus der Pietistenzeit
(Bremen, 1886); HOSSBACH, Ph. J. Spener u. seine Zeit (Berlin,
1828; 2nd ed., 1853); GRUeNBERG, Ph. J. Spener (Goettingen,
1893-1906); NIEMEYER, A. H. Francke (Halle, 1794); GUERICKE, A.
H. Francke (Halle, 1827); KRAMER, A. H. Francke (Halle, 1880-2);
HARTMANN, A. H. Francke (Calw and Stuttgart, 1897); OTTO, A. H.
Francke (Halle, 1902); KAYSER, Christian Thomasius u. der
Pietismus, supplement to Jahresbericht des Wilhelm Gymnasiums in
Hamburg (Hamburg, 1900).
FRIEDRICH LAUCHERT.
Albert Pighius
Albert (Pigghe) Pighius
A theologian, mathematician, and astronomer, born at Kampen,
Overyssel, Holland, about 1490; died at Utrecht, 26 Dec., 1542.
He studied philosophy and began the study of theology at
Louvain, where Adrian of Utrecht, later Pope Adrian VI, was one
of his teachers. Pighius completed his studies at Cologne and
received in 1517 the degree of Doctor of Theology. He then
followed his teacher Adrian to Spain, and, when the latter
became pope, to Rome, where he also remained during the reigns
of Clement VII and Paul III, and was repeatedly employed in
ecclesiastico-political embassies. He had taught mathematics to
Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, afterwards Paul III; in 1535 Paul
III appointed him provost of St. John's at Utrecht, where he had
held a canonry since 1524. At the religious disputation of
Ratisbon in 1541 he was on the Catholic side.
Among his writings the following belong to the sphere of his
mathematico-astronomical studies: "Astrologiae defensio adversus
prognosticatorum vulgus, qui annuas praedictiones edunt et se
astrologos mentiuntur" (Paris, 1518); also the treatise
addressed to Leo X upon the reform of the calendar, "De
aequinoctiarum solstitiorumque inventione et de ratione
paschalis celebrationis deque restitutione ecclesiastici
Calendarii (Paris, 1520); also "Apologia adversus novam Marci
Beneventani astronomiam" (Paris, 1522); and "Defensio Apologiae
adversus Marci Beneventani astronomiam" (Paris, 1522). As a
theologian he zealously defended the authority of the Church
against the Reformers. His most important theological work is a
rejoinder to Henry VIII of England and is entitled: "Hierarchiae
ecclesiasticae assertio" (Cologne, 1538, dedicated to Paul III;
later editions, 1544, 1558, 1572). In reply John Leland wrote
his "Antiphilarchia"; of. "Dict. Nat. Biog." (new ed., London,
1909), XI, 893. Pighius also wrote: "Apologia indicti a Paulo
III. Concilii, adversus Lutheranas confederationes" (Cologne,
1537; Paris, 1538); "De libero hominis arbitrio et divina gratia
libri X" (Cologne, 1542), against Luther and Calvin;
"Controversiarum praecipuarum in Comitiis Ratisponensibus
tractatarum . . . explicatio (Cologne, 1542). To this were added
the two treatises: "Quaestio de divortiatorum novis coniugiis et
uxorum pluralitate sub lege evangelica" and "Diatriba de actis
VI. et VII. Synodi". Other theological works were: "Ratio
componendorum dissidiorum et sarciendae in religione concordiae"
(Cologne, 1542), and his last work, "Apologia adversus Martini
Buceri calumnias" (Mainz, 1543). A treatise "Adversus Graecorum
errores", dedicated to Clement VII, is preserved in manuscript
in the Vatican Library.
Pighius was in his convictions a faithful adherent of the Church
and a man of the best intentions, but on some points he advanced
teachings which are not in harmony with the Catholic position.
One was his opinion that original sin was nothing more than the
sin of Adam imputed to every child at birth, without any
inherent taint of sinfulness being in the child itself. In the
doctrine of justification also he made too many concessions to
Protestants. He originated the doctrine of the double
righteousness by which man is justified, that has justly been
characterized as "semi-Lutheranism". According to this theory,
the imputed righteousness of Christ is the formal cause of the
justification of man before God, while the individual
righteousness inherent in man is always imperfect and therefore
insufficient. These opinions of Pighius were adopted by Johannes
Gropper and Cardinal Contarini; during the discussion at the
Council of Trent of the "Decretum de Justificatione" they were
maintained by Seripando, but the Council, with due regard for
the ideas that were justifiable in themselves, rejected the
untenable compromise theory itself.
LINSENMANN, Albertus Pighius und sein theologischer Standpunkt
in Theol. Quartalschrift, XLVIII (1866), 571-644; PASTOR, Die
kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen waehrend der Regierung Karls V.
(Freiburg im Br., 1879), 167 sq.; DITTRICH, Gasparo Contarini
(Braunsberg, 1885), 660-69; HEFELE-HERGENROeTHER,
Conciliengesch., IX (Freiburg im Br., 1890), 936-38; HEFNER, Die
Entstehungsgesch. des Trienter Rechtfertigungsdecretes
(Paderborn. 1909), 165 sq. His correspondence was published by
FRIEDENSBURG, Beitraege sum Briefwechsel der kathol. Gelehrten
Deutschlands im Reformationszeitalter in Zeitschrift fuer
Kirchengesch., XXIII (1902), 110-55.
FRIEDRICH LAUCHERT.
Ven. Giuseppe Maria Pignatelli
Ven. Giuseppe Maria Pignatelli
Born 27 December, 1737, in Saragossa, Spain; died 11 November,
1811. His family was of Neapolitan descent and noble lineage.
After finishing his early studies in the Jesuit College of
Saragossa, he entered the Society of Jesus (8 May, 1753)
notwithstanding his family's opposition. On concluding his
ecclesiastical studies he was ordained, and taught at Saragossa.
In 1766 the Governor of Saragossa was held responsible for the
threatened famine, and so enraged was the populace against him
that they were about to destroy his palace by fire. Pignatelli's
persuasive power over the people averted the calamity. Despite
the letter of thanks sent by Charles III the Jesuits were
accused of instigating the above-mentioned riot. Pignatelli's
refutation of the calumny was followed by the decree of
expulsion of the Fathers of Saragossa (4 April, 1767). Minister
Aranda offered to reinstate Nicola and Giuseppe Pignatelli,
providing they abandon their order, but in spite of Giuseppe's
ill-health they stood firm. Not permitted by Clement III to land
at Civita Vecchia, with the other Jesuits of Aragon, he repaired
to St. Boniface in Corsica where he displayed singular ability
for organization in providing for five hundred fathers and
students. His sister, the Duchess of Acerra, aided him with
money and provisions. He organized studies and maintained
regular observance. When France assumed control of Corsica, he
was obliged to return to Genoa. He was again detailed to secure
a location in the legation of Ferrara, not only for the fathers
of his own province of Aragon, but also for those of Peru and
Mexico, but the community was dissolved in August, 1773. The two
Pignatelli brothers were then obliged to betake themselves to
Bologna, where they lived in retirement (being forbidden to
exercise the sacred ministry). They devoted themselves to study
and Pignatelli himself collected books and manuscripts bearing
on the history of the Society. On ascertaining from Pius IV that
the Society of Jesus still survived in White Russia, he desired
to be received there. For various reasons he was obliged to
defer his departure. During this delay he was invited, on the
instance of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, to re-establish the
Society in his States; and in 1793, having obtained through
Catharine II a few fathers from Russia, with other Jesuits, an
establishment was made. On 6 July, 1797, Pignatelli there
renewed his vows. In 1799 he was appointed master of novices in
Colerno. On the decease of the Duke of Parma, the States of
Parma were placed under allegiance of France. Notwithstanding
this fact, the Jesuits remained undisturbed for eighteen months,
during which period Pignatelli was appointed Provincial of
Italy. After considerable discussion he obtained the restoration
of the Jesuits in Naples. The papal Brief (30 July, 1804) was
much more favourable than that granted for Parma. The older
Jesuits soon asked to be received back; many, however, engaged
in various ecclesiastical callings, remained at their posts.
Schools and a college were opened in Sicily, but when this part
of the kingdom fell into Napoleon's power, the dispersion of the
Jesuits were ordered; but the decree was not rigorously
executed. Pignatelli founded colleges in Rome, Tivoli, and
Orvieto, and the fathers were invited to other cities. During
the exile of Pius VII and the French occupation the Society
continued unmolested, owing largely to the prudence and the
merits of Pignatelli; he even managed to avoid the oaths of
allegiance to Napoleon. He also secured the restoration of the
Society in Sardinia (1807). Under Gregory XVI the cause of his
beatification was introduced.
Nonell, El V.P. Jose M. Pignatelli y la C. de J. en su
estinction y restablecimiento (3 vols., Manresa, 1893-4; Boero,
Istoria del V. Padre Gius. M. Pignatelli (Rome, 1856).
U. BENIGNI
William Pike
Ven. William Pike
Martyr, born in Dorsetshire; died at Dorchester, dec., 1591. He
was a joiner, and lived at West Moors, West Parley. On his way
from Dorchester to his home, he fell in with the venerable
martyr Thomas Pilchard, who converted him, probably in 1586. At
his trial for being reconciled with the See of Rome "the bloody
question about the Pope's supremacy was put to him, and he
frankly confessed that he maintained the authority of the Roman
See, for which he was condemned to die a traitor's death". When
they asked him to recant in order to save his life and his
family, "he boldly replied that it did not become a son of Mr.
Pilchard to do so". "Until he died, Mr. Pilchard's name was
constantly on his lips." Being asked at death what had moved him
to that resolution etc., he said "Nothing but the smell of a
pilchard". The date of his death is not recorded, but in the
Menology his name is under 22 Dec.
Pollen, Acts of the English Martyrs (London, 1901), 267; English
Martyrs 1584-1603 (London, 1908), 289; Challoner, Missionary
Priests, I, no. 89; Stanton, Menology of England and Wales
(London, 1887), 606, 689.
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT
Nuestra Senora Del Pilar
Nuestra Senora Del Pilar
"Our Lady of the Pillar", a celebrated church and shrine, at
Saragossa, Spain, containing a miraculous image of the Blessed
Virgin, which is the object of very special devotion throughout
the kingdom. The image, which is placed on a marble pillar,
whence the name of the church, was crowned in 1905 with a crown
designed by the Marquis of Grini, and valued at 450,000 pesetas
(-L-18,750, 1910). The present spacious church in Baroque style
was begun in 1681. According to an ancient Spanish tradition,
given in the Roman Breviary (for 12 October, Ad. mat., lect.
vi), the original shrine was built by St. James the Apostle at
the wish of the Blessed Virgin, who appeared to him as he was
praying by the banks of the Ebro at Saragossa. There has been
much discussion as the truth of the tradition. Mgr L. Duchesne
denies, as did Baronius, the coming of St. James to Spain, and
reproduces arguments founded on the writings of the Twelfth
Ecumenical Council, discovered by Loaisa, but rejected as
spurious by the Jesuit academician Fita and many others. Those
who defend the tradition adduce the testimony of St. Jerome (PL
XXIV, 373) and that of the Mozarabic Office. The oldest written
testimony of devotion to the Blessed Virgin in Saragossa usually
quoted is that of Pedro Librana (1155). Fita has published data
of two Christian tombs at Saragossa, dating from Roman days, on
which the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is represented.
J.M. MARCH
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
After the deposition of the eldest son of Herod, Archelaus (who
had succeeded his father as ethnarch), Judea was placed under
the rule of a Roman procurator. Pilate, who was the fifth,
succeeding Valerius Gratus in A.D. 26, had greater authority
than most procurators under the empire, for in addition to the
ordinary duty of financial administration, he had supreme power
judicially. His unusually long period of office (A.D. 26-36)
covers the whole of the active ministry both of St. John the
Baptist and of Jesus Christ. As procurator Pilate was
necessarily of equestrian rank, but beyond that we know little
of his family or origin. Some have thought that he was only a
freedman, deriving his name from pileus (the cap of freed
slaves) but for this there seems to be no adequate evidence, and
it is unlikely that a freedman would attain to a post of such
importance. The Pontii were a Samnite gens. Pilate owed his
appointment to the influence of Sejanus. The official residence
of the procurators was the palace of Herod at Caearea; where
there was a military force of about 3,000 soldiers. These
soldiers came up to Jerusalem at the time of the feasts, when
the city was full of strangers, and there was greater danger of
disturbances, hence it was that Pilate had come to Jerusalem at
the time of the Crucifixion. His name will be forever covered
with infamy because of the part which he took in this matter,
though at the time it appeared to him of small importance.
Pilate is a type of the worldly man, knowing the right and
anxious to do it so far as it can be done without personal
sacrifice of any kind, but yielding easily to pressure from
those whose interest it is that he should act otherwise. He
would gladly have acquitted Christ, and even made serious
efforts in that direction, but gave way at once when his own
position was threatened. The other events of his rule are not of
very great importance. Philo (Ad Gaium, 38) speaks of him as
inflexible, merciless, and obstinate. The Jews hated him and his
administration, for he was not only very severe, but showed
little consideration for their susceptibilities. Some standards
bearing the image of Tiberius, which had been set up by him in
Jerusalem, caused an outbreak which would have ended in a
massacre had not Pilate given way. At a later date Tiberius
ordered him to remove certain gilt shields, which he had set up
in Jerusalem in spite of the remonstrances of the people. The
incident mentioned in St. Luke, xiii, 1, of the Galilaeans whose
blood Pilate mingled with the sacrifices, is not elsewhere
referred to, but is quite in keeping with other authentic events
of his rule. He was, therefore, anxious that no further hostile
reports should be sent to the emperor concerning him. The
tendency, already discernible in the canonical Gospels, to lay
stress on the efforts of Pilate to acquit Christ, and thus pass
as lenient a judgment as possible upon his crime, goes further
in the apocryphal Gospels and led in later years to the claim
that he actually became a Christian. The Abyssinian Church
reckons him as a saint, and assigns 25 June to him and to
Claudia Procula, his wife. The belief that she became a
Christian goes back to the second century, and may be found in
Origen (Hom., in Mat., xxxv). The Greek Church assigns her a
feast on 27 October. Tertullian and Justin Martyr both speak of
a report on the Crucifixion (not extant) sent in by Pilate to
Tiberius, from which idea a large amount of apocryphal
literature originated. Some of these were Christian in origin
(Gospel of Nicodemus), others came from the heathen, but these
have all perished.
His rule was brought to an end through trouble which arose in
Samaria. An imposter had given out that it was in his power to
discover the sacred vessels which, as he alleged, had been
hidden by Moses on Mount Gerizim, whither armed Samaritans came
in large numbers. Pilate seems to have thought the whole affair
was a blind, covering some other more important design, for he
hurried forces to attack them, and many were slain. They
appealed to Vitellius, who was at that time legate in Syria,
saying that nothing political had been intended, and complaining
of Pilate's whole administration. He was summoned to Rome to
answer their charges, but before he could reach the city the
Emperor Tiberius had died. That is the last we know of Pilate
from authentic sources, but legend has been busy with his name.
He is said by Eusebius (H.E., ii, 7), on the authority of
earlier writers, whom he does not name, to have fallen into
great misfortunes under Caligula, and eventually to have
committed suicide. Other details come from less respectable
sources. His body, says the "Mors Pilati", was thrown into the
Tiber, but the waters were so disturbed by evil spirits that the
body was taken to Vienne and sunk in the Rhone, where a
monument, called Pilate's tomb, is still to be seen. As the same
thing occurred there, it was again removed and sunk in the lake
at Lausanne. Its final disposition was in a deep and lonely
mountain tarn, which, according to later tradition, was on a
mountain, still called Pilatus, close to Lucerne. The real
origin of this name is, however, to be sought in the cap of
cloud which often covers the mountain, and serves as a barometer
to the inhabitants of Lucerne. The are many other legends about
Pilate in the folklore of Germany, but none of them have the
slightest authority.
ARTHUR S. BARNES
Venerable Thomas Pilchard
Venerable Thomas Pilchard
(Or PILCHER).
Martyr, born at Battle, Sussex, 1557; died at Dorchester, 21
March 1586-7. He became a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in
1576, and took the degree of M.A., in 1579, resigning his
fellowship the following year. He arrived at Reims 20 November,
1581, and was ordained priest at Laon, March, 1583, and was sent
on the mission. He was arrested soon after, and banished; but
returned almost immediately. He was again arrested early in
March, 1586-7, and imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol, and in the
fortnight between committal to prison and condemnation converted
thirty persons. He was so cruelly drawn upon the hurdle that he
was fainting when he came to the place of execution. When the
rope was cut, being still alive he stood erect under the
scaffold. The executioner, a cook, carried out the sentence so
clumsily that the victim, turning to the sheriff, exclaimed "Is
this then your justice, Mr. Sheriff?" According to another
account "the priest raised himself and putting out his hands
cast forward his own bowels, crying 'Miserere mei'". Father
Warford says: "There was not a priest in the whole West of
England, who, to my knowledge, was his equal in virtue."
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT
Pilgrimage of Grace
Pilgrimage of Grace
The name given to the religious rising in the north of England,
1536. The cause of this great popular movement, which extended
over five counties and found sympathizers all over England, was
attributed to Robert Aske, the leader of the insurgents, to
"spreading of heretics, suppression of houses of religion and
other matters touching the commonwealth". And in his "Narrative
to the King", he declared:
In all parts of the realm men's hearts much grudged with the
suppression of abbeys, and the first fruits, by reason the same
would be the destruction of the whole religion in England. And their
especial great grudge is against the lord Crumwell.
The movement broke out on 13 October, 1536, immediately
following the failure of the Lincolnshire Rising; and Robert
Aske, a London barrister of good Yorkshire family, who had been
to some extent concerned in the Lincolnshire rising, putting
himself at the head of nine thousand insurgents, marched on
York, which he entered. There he arranged for the expelled monks
and nuns to return to their houses; the king's tenants were
driven out and religious observance resumed. The subsequent
success of the rising was so great that the royal leaders, the
Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Shrewsbury, opened negotiations with
the insurgents at Doncaster, where Aske had assembled between
thirty and forty thousand men. As a result of this, Henry
authorized Norfolk to promise a general pardon and a Parliament
to be held at York within a year. Aske then dismissed his
followers, trusting in the king's promises. But these promises
were not kept, and a new rising took place in Cumberland and
Westmoreland, and was spreading to Yorkshire. Upon this, the
king arrested Aske and several of the other leaders, who were
all convicted of treason and executed. The loss of the leaders
enabled Norfolk to crush the rising. The king avenged himself on
Cumberland and Westmoreland by a series of massacres under the
form of martial law. Though Aske had tried to prevent the rising
he was put to death. Lord Darcy, Sir Henry Percy, and several
other gentlemen, together with the four Abbots of Fountains,
Jervaulx, Barlings, and Sawley, who were executed at Tyburn,
have been reckoned by Catholic writers as martyrs for the Faith,
and their names inserted in martyrologies, but they have not
included in the cause of beatification of English martyrs.
EDWIN BURTON
Pilgrimages
Pilgrimages
(Mid. Eng., pilgrime, Old Fr., pelegrin, derived from Lat.
peregrinum, supposed origin, per and ager-with idea of wandering
over a distance).
Pilgrimages may be defined as journeys made to some place with
the purpose of venerating it, or in order to ask there for
supernatural aid, or to discharge some religious obligation.
ORIGIN
The idea of a pilgrimage has been traced back by some
(Littledale in "Encycl. Brit.", 1885, XIX, 90; "New Internat.
Encyc.", New York, 1910, XVI, 20, etc.) to the primitive notion
of local deities, that is, that the divine beings who controlled
the movements of men and nature could exercise that control only
over certain definite forces or within set boundaries. Thus the
river gods had no power over those who kept away from the river,
nor could the wind deities exercise any influence over those who
lived in deserts or clearings or on the bare mountain-side.
Similarly there were gods of the hills and gods of the plains
who could only work out their designs, could only favour or
destroy men within their own locality (III Kings, xx, 23).
Hence, when some man belonging to a mountain tribe found himself
in the plain and was in need of divine help, he made a
pilgrimage back again to the hills to petition it from his gods.
It is therefore the broken tribesmen who originate pilgrimages.
Without denying the force of this argument as suggesting or
extending the custom, for it has been admitted as plausible by
distinguished Catholics (cf. Lagrange, "Etudes sur les relig.
semit., VIII, Paris, 1905, 295, 301), we may adhere to a less
arbitrary solution by seeking its cause in the instinctive
notion of the human heart. For pilgrimages properly so called
are made to the places where the gods or heroes were born or
wrought some great action or died, or to the shrines where the
deity had already signified it to be his pleasure to work
wonders. Once theophanies are localized, pilgrimages necessarily
follow. The Incarnation was bound inevitably to draw men across
Europe to visit the Holy Places, for the custom itself arises
spontaneously from the heart. It is found in all religions. The
Egyptians journeyed to Sekket's shrine at Bubastis or to Ammon's
oracle at Thebes; the Greeks sought for counsel from Apollo at
Delphi and for cures from Asclepius at Epidaurus; the Mexicans
gathered at the huge temple of Quetzal; the Peruvians massed in
sun-worship at Cuzco and the Bolivians in Titicaca. But it is
evident that the religions which centered round a single
character, be he god or prophet, would be the most famous for
their pilgrimages, not for any reason of tribal returns to a
central district where alone the deity has power, but rather
owing to the perfectly natural wish to visit spots made holy by
the birth, life, or death of the god or prophet. Hence Buddhism
and Mohammedanism are especially famous in inculcating this
method of devotion. Huge gatherings of people intermittently all
the year round venerate Kapilavastu where Gaukama Buddha began
his life, Benares where he opened his sacred mission, Kasinagara
where he died; and Mecca and Medina have become almost bywords
in English as the goals of long aspirations, so famous are they
for their connexion with the prophet of Islam.
Granting then this instinctive movement of human nature, we
should expect to find that in Christianity God would Himself
satisfy the craving He had first Himself created. The story of
His appearance on earth in bodily form when He "dwelt amongst
us" could not but be treasured up by His followers, and each
city and site mentioned became a matter of grateful memory to
them. Then again the more famous of His disciples, whom we
designate as saints, themselves began to appeal to the devotion
of their fellows, and round the acts of their lives soon
clustered a whole cycle of venerated shrines. Especially would
this be felt in the case of the martyrs; for their passion and
death stamped more dramatically still the exact locality of
their triumph. Moreover, it seems reasonable to suppose that yet
another influence worked to the same end. There sprang up in the
early Church a curious privilege, accorded to dying martyrs, of
granting the remission of canonical penances. No doubt it began
through a generous acceptance of the relation of St. Stephen to
St. Paul. But certain it is that at an early date this custom
had become so highly organized that there was a libellus, or
warrant of reconciliation, a set form for the readmittance of
sinners to Christian fellowship (Batiffol, "Etudes d'hist. et de
theol. posit.", I, Paris, 1906, 112- 20). Surely then it is not
fanciful to see how from this came a further development. Not
only had the martyrs in their last moments this power of
absolving from ecclesiastical penalties, but even after their
deaths, their tombs and the scenes of their martyrdom were
considered to be capable also-if devoutly venerated-of removing
the taints and penalties of sin. Accordingly it came to be
looked upon as a purifying act to visit the bodies of the saints
and above all the places where Christ Himself had set the
supreme example of a teaching sealed with blood.
Again it may be noted how, when the penitential system of the
Church, which grouped itself round the sacrament of the
confessional, had been authoritatively and legally organized,
pilgrimages were set down as adequate punishments inflicted for
certain crimes. The hardships of the journey, the penitential
garb worn, the mendicity it entailed made a pilgrimage a real
and efficient penance (Beazley, "Dawn of Modern Geography", II,
139; Furnival, "The Stacions of Rome and the Pilgrim's Sea
Voyage", London, 1867, 47). To quote a late text, the following
is one of the canons enacted under King Edgar (959-75): "It is a
deep penitence that a layman lay aside his weapons and travel
far barefoot and nowhere pass a second night and fast and watch
much and pray fervently, by day and by night and willingly
undergo fatigue and be so squalid that iron come not on hair or
on nail" (Thorpe, "Ancient Laws", London, 1840, 411-2; cf. 44,
410, etc.). Another witness to the real difficulties of the
wayfaring palmer may be cited from "Syr Isenbras", an early
English ballad:-
"They bare with them no maner of thynge
That was worth a farthynge
Cattell, golde, ne fe;
But mekely they asked theyre meate
Where that they myght it gette.
For Saynct Charyte."
(Uterson, "Early Popular Poetry", I, London, 1817, 83). And the
Earl of Arundel of a later date obtained absolution for poaching
on the bishop's preserves at Hoghton Chace only on condition of
a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Richard of Chichester
("Archaeologia", XLV, 176; cf. Chaucer, "Works", ed. Morris,
III, 266). And these are but late descriptions of a practice of
penance which stretches back beyond the legislation of Edgar and
the organization of St. Theodore to the sub-Apostolic age.
Finally a last influence that made the pilgrimage so popular a
form of devotion was the fact that it contributed very largely
to ease the soul of some of its vague restlessness in an age
when conditions of life tended to cramp men down to certain
localities. It began to be looked upon as a real help to the
establishment of a perfectly controlled character. It took its
place in the medieval manuals of psychology. So John de Burg in
1385 (Pupilla oculi, fol. LXII), "contra acediam, opera
laboriosa bona ut sint peregrinationes ad loca sancta."
HISTORY IN GENERAL
In a letter written towards the end of the fourth century by
Sts. Paula and Eustochium to the Roman matron Marcella, urging
her to follow them out to the Holy Places, they insist on the
universality of the custom of these pilgrimages to
Palestine:-"Whosoever is noblest in Gaul comes hither. And
Britain though divided from us yet hastens from her land of
sunset to these shrines known to her only through the
Scriptures." They go on to enumerate the various nationalities
that crowded round these holy places, Armenians, Persians,
Indians, Ethiopians, and many others (P. L., XXII; Ep. xlvi,
489-900). But it is of greater interest to note how they claim
for this custom a continuity from Apostolic days. From the
Ascension to their time, bishops, martyrs, doctors, and troops
of people, say they, had flocked to see the sacred stones of
Bethlehem and of wherever else the Lord had trod (489). It has
been suggested that this is an exaggeration, and certainly we
can offer no proof of any such uninterrupted practice. Yet when
the first examples begin to appear they are represented to us
without a word of astonishment or a note of novelty, as though
people were already fully accustomed to like adventures. Thus in
Eusebius, "History" (tr. Cruse, London, 1868, VI, xi, 215), it
is remarked of Bishop Alexander that "he performed a journey
from Cappadocia to Jerusalem in consequence of a vow and the
celebrity of the place." And the date given is also worthy of
notice, a.d. 217. Then again there is the story of the two
travellers of Placentia, John and Antoninus the Elder (Acta SS.,
July, II, 18), which took place about 303-4. Of course with the
conversion of Constantine and the visit to Jerusalem of the
Empress St. Helena the pilgrimages to the Holy Land became very
much more frequent. The story of the finding of the Cross is too
well known to be here repeated (cf. P. L., XXVII, 1125), but its
influence was unmistakable. The first church of the Resurrection
was built by Eustathius the Priest (loc. cit., 1164). But the
flow of pilgrimages began in vigour four years after St.
Helena's visit (Acta SS., June, III, 176; Sept., III, 56). Then
the organization of the Church that partly caused and partly
resulted from the Council of Nicaea continued the same custom.
In 333 was the famous Bordeaux Pilgrimage ("Palestine Pilgrim
Text Society", London, 1887, preface and notes by Stewart). It
was the first of a whole series of pilgrimages that have left
interesting and detailed accounts of the route, the peoples
through which they passed, the sites identified with those
mentioned in the Gospels. Another was the still better-known
"Peregrinatio Silviae" (ed. Barnard, London, 1891, Pal. Pilg.
Text Soc.; cf. "Rev. des quest. hist." 1903, 367, etc.).
Moreover, the whole movement was enormously increased by the
language and action of St. Jerome whose personality at the close
of the fourth century dominated East and West. Slightly earlier
St. John Chrysostom emphasized the efficacy in arousing devotion
of visiting even the "lifeless spots" where the saints had lived
(In Phil., 702-3, in P. G., LXII). And his personal love of St.
Paul would have unfailingly driven him to Rome to see the tomb
of the Apostles, but for the burden of his episcopal office. He
says ("In Ephes. hom. 8, ii, 57, in P. G., LXII), "If I were
freed from my labours and my body were in sound health I would
eagerly make a pilgrimage merely to see the chains that had held
him captive and the prison where he lay." While in another
passage of extraordinary eloquence he expresses his longing to
gaze on the dust of the great Apostle, the dust of the lips that
had thundered, of the hands that had been fettered, of the eyes
that had seen the Master; even as he speaks he is dazzled by the
splendour of the metropolis of the world lit up by the glorious
tombs of the twin prince Apostles (In Rom. hom. 32, iii, 678,
etc., in P. G., LX). Nor in this is he advocating a new
practice, for he mentions without comment how many people
hurried across the seas to Arabia to see and venerate the
dunghill of Job (Ad pop. Antioch. hom. 5, 69, in P. G., XLIX).
St. Jerome was cramped by no such official duties as had kept
St. Chrysostom to his diocese. His conversion, following on the
famous vision of his judgment, turned him from his studies of
pagan classics to the pages of Holy Writ, and, uniting with his
untiring energy and thoroughness, pushed him on to Palestine to
devote himself to the Scriptures in the land where they had been
written. Once there the actual Gospel scenes appealed with
supreme freshness to him, and on his second return from Rome his
enthusiasm fired several Roman matrons to accompany him and
share his labours and his devotions. Monasteries and convents
were built and a Latin colony was established which in later
times was to revolutionize Europe by inaugurating the Crusades.
From the Holy Land the circle widens to Rome, as a centre of
pilgrimages. St. Chrysostom, as has been shown, expressed his
vehement desire to visit it. And in the early church histories
of Eusebius, Zosimus, Socrates, and others, notices are frequent
of the journeyings of celebrated princes and bishops of the City
of the Seven Hills. Of course the Saxon kings and royal families
have made this a familiar thing to us. The "Ecclesiastical
History" of St. Bede is crowded with references to princes and
princesses who laid aside their royal diadems in order to visit
the shrine of the Apostles; and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle"
after his death takes up the same refrain. Then from Rome again
the shrines of local saints begin to attract their votaries. In
the letter already cited in which Paula and Eustochium invite
Marcella to Palestine they argue from the already established
custom of visiting the shrines of the martyrs: "Martyrum ubique
sepulchra veneramur" (Ep. xlvi, 488, in P. L., XXII). St.
Augustine endeavours to settle a dispute by sending both
litigants on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Felix of Nola, in
order that the saint may somehow or other make some sign as to
which party was telling the truth. He candidly admits that he
knows of no such miracle having been performed in Africa, but
argues to it from the analogy of Milan where God had made known
His pleasure through the relics of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius
(Ep. lxxvii, 269, in P. L., XXXIII). Indeed, the very idea of
relics, which existed as early as the earliest of the catacombs,
teaches the essential worth of pilgrimages, i. e., of the
journeying to visit places hallowed by events in the lives of
heroes or of gods who walked in the guise of men (St. Aug., "De
civ. Dei", XXII, 769, in P. L., XXXVIII).
At first a mere question of individual travelling, a short
period was sufficient to develop into pilgrimages properly
organized companies. Even the "Peregrinatio Silviae" shows how
they were being systematized. The initiators were clerics who
prepared the whole route beforehand and mapped out the cities of
call. The bodies of troops were got together to protect the
pilgrims. Moreover, Christian almsgiving invented a method of
participation in the merits of a pilgrimage for those unable
actually to take part in them; it established hospices along the
line (Ordericus Vitalis, "Hist. eccles.", ed. Le Prevost, Suc.
hist. France, II, 64, 53; Toulmin Smith, "English Guilds",
passim). The conversion of the Hungarians amplified this system
of halts along the road; of St. Stephen, for example, we read
that "he made the way very safe for all and thus allowed by his
benevolence a countless multitude both of noble and common
people to start for Jerusalem" (Glaber, "Chron.", III, C. I.
Mon. Germ. Hist., VII, 62). Thus these pious journeys gradually
harden down and become fixed and definite. They are allowed for
by laws, civil and ecclesiastical. Wars are fought to insure
their safety, crusades are begun in their defence, pilgrims are
everywhere granted free access in times alike of peace and war.
By the "Consuetudines" of the canons of Hereford cathedral we
see that legislation was found to be necessary. No canon was to
make more than one pilgrimage beyond the seas in his own
lifetime. But each year three weeks were allowed to enable any
that would to visit shrines within the kingdom. To go abroad to
the tomb of St. Denis, seven weeks of absence was considered
legal, eight weeks to the body of St. Edmund at Pontigny,
sixteen weeks to Rome, or to St. James at Compostella, and a
year to Jerusalem (Archaeol., XXXI, 251-2 notes).
Again in another way pilgrimages were being regarded as part of
normal life. In the registers of the Inquisition at Carcassone
(Waterton, "Pictas Mariana Britannica", 112) we find the four
following places noted as being the centres of the greater
pilgrimages to be imposed as penances for the graver crimes, the
tomb of the Apostles at Rome, the shrine of St. James at
Compostella, St. Thomas's body at Canterbury, and the relics of
the Three Kings at Cologne. Naturally with all this there was a
great deal of corruption. Even from the earliest times the
Fathers perceived how liable such devotions were to degenerate
into an abuse. St. John Chrysostom, so ardent in his praise of
pilgrimages, found it necessary to explain that there was "need
for none to cross the seas or fare upon a long journey; let each
of us at home invoke God earnestly and He will hear our prayer"
(Ad pop. Antioch, hom. iii, 2, 49, in P. G., XLIX; cf. hom. iv,
6, 68). St. Gregory Nazianzen is even stronger in his
condemnation. He has a short letter in which he speaks of those
who regard it as an essential part of piety to visit Jerusalem
and see the traces of the Passion of Christ. This, he says, the
Master has never commanded, though the custom is not therefore
without merit. But still he knows that in many cases the journey
has proved a scandal and caused serious harm. He witnesses,
therefore, both to the custom and the abuse, evidently thinking
that the latter outweighed the former (Ep. ii, 1009, in P. G.,
XLVI). So again St. Jerome writes to Paulinus (Ep. lxviii in P.
L., XXII) to explain, in an echo of Cicero's phrase, that it is
not the fact of living in Jerusalem, but of living there well,
that is worthy of praise (579); he instances countless saints
who never set foot in the Holy Land; and dares not tie down to
one small portion of the Earth Him whom Heaven itself is unable
to contain. He ends with a sentence that is by now famous, "et
de Hierusolymis et de Britannia aequaliter patet aula
coe;lestis" (581).
Another well-quoted passage comes from a letter of St. Augustine
in which he expounds in happy paradox that not by journeying but
by loving we draw nigh unto God. To Him who is everywhere
present and everywhere entire we approach not by our feet but by
our hearts (Ep. clv, 672, in P. L. XXXII). For certainly
pilgrimages were not always undertaken for the best of motives.
Glaber (ed. Prou, Paris, 1886, 107) thinks it necessary to note
of Lethbald that he was far from being one of those who were led
to Jerusalem simply from vanity, that they might have wonderful
stories to tell, when they came back. Thus, as the centuries
pass, we find human nature the same in its complexity of
motives. Its noblest actions are found to be often caused by
petty spites or vanity or overvaulting ambition; and even when
begun in good faith as a source of devotion, the practices of
piety at times are degraded into causes of vice. So the author
of the "Imitation of Christ' raises his voice against overmuch
pilgrimage-making: "Who wander much are but little hallowed."
Now too the words of the fifteenth-century English Dominican,
John Bromyard ("Summa Praedicantium", Tit. Feria n. 6, fol. 191,
Lyons, 1522):-"There are some who keep their pilgrimages and
festivals not for God but for the devil. They who sin more
freely when away from home or who go on pilgrimage to succeed in
inordinate and foolish love-those who spend their time on the
road in evil and uncharitable conversation may indeed say
peregrinamur a Domino-they make their pilgrimage away from God
and to the devil."
But the most splenetic scorn is to be found in the pages of that
master of satire, Erasmus. His "Religious Pilgrimage"
("Colloquies" ed. Johnson, London, 1878, 11, 1-37) is a terrible
indictment of the abuses of his day. Exaggerated no doubt in its
expressions, yet revealing a sufficient modicum of real evil, it
is a graphic picture from the hand of an intelligent observer.
There is evident sign that pilgrimages were losing in
popularity, not merely because the charity of many was growing
cold, but because of the excessive credulity of the guardians of
the shrines, their overwrought insistence on the necessity of
pilgrimage-making, and the fact that many who journeyed from
shrine to shrine neglected their domestic duties. These three
evils are quaintly expressed in the above mentioned dialogue,
with a liberty of speech that makes one astonished at Rome's
toleration in the sixteenth century. With all these abuses
Erasmus saw how the spoiler would have ready to hand excuses for
suppressing the whole system and plundering the most attractive
treasures. The wealth might well be put, he suggested, to other
uses; but the idea of a pilgrimage contained in it nothing
opposed to the enlightened opinions of this prophet of "sweet
reasonableness". "If any shall do it of their own free choice
from a great affection to piety, I think they deserve to be left
to their own freedom" (op. cit., 35). This was evidently the
opinion also of Henry VIII, for, though in the Injunctions of
1536 and 1538 pilgrimages were to be discouraged, yet both in
the bishop's book (The Institution of the Christian Man, 1537)
and the king's book (The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of the
Christian Man, 1543), it is laid down that the abuse and not the
custom is reprehensible. What they really attack is the fashion
of "putting differences between image and image, trusting more
in one than in another" (cf. Gairdner, "Lollardy and the
Reformation", II, London, 1908, IV, ii, 330, etc.). All this
shows how alive Christendom has been to evils which Reformers
are forever denouncing as inseparable from Catholicism. It
admits the danger but does not allow it to prejudice the good
use ("Diayloge of Syr Thomas More", London,1529). Before dealing
with each pilgrimage in particular one further remark should be
made. Though not properly included under a list of abuses, a
custom must be noted of going in search of shrines utterly at
haphazard and without any definite notion of where the journey
was to end (Waterton, "Piet. Mar. Britt.", London, 1879, III,
107; "Anglo-Sax. Chron.", tr. Thorpe in R. S., London, 1861, II,
69; Beazley, "Dawn of Mod. Geog.", London, 1897-1906, I, 174-5;
Tobl. Bibl. Geog. Pal. 26, ed. of 1876).
HISTORY IN PARTICULAR
It will be necessary to mention and note briefly the chief
places of Catholic pilgrimage, in early days, in the Middle
ages, and in modern times.
Aachen, Rhenish Prussia.-This celebrated city owes its fame as a
centre of pilgrimage to the extraordinary list of precious
relics which it contains. Of their authenticity there is no need
here to speak, but they include among a host of others, the
swaddling clothes of the child Jesus, the loin-cloth which Our
Lord wore on the Cross, the cloth on which the Baptist's head
lay after his execution, and the Blessed Virgin's cloak. These
relics are exposed to public veneration every seven years. The
number of pilgrims in 1881 was 158,968 (Champagnac, "Dict. des
pelerinages", Paris, 1859, I, 78).
Alet, Limoux, France, contains a shrine of the Blessed Virgin
dating traditionally from the twelfth century. The principal
feast is celebrated on 8 September, when there is still a great
concourse of pilgrims from the neighbourhood of Toulouse. It is
the centre of a confraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
founded for the conversion of sinners, the members of which
exceed several thousands (Champagnac, II, 89).
Ambronay, Burgundy, France, an ancient shrine of the Blessed
Virgin, dating back to the seventh century. It is still a centre
of pilgrimage.
Amorgos, or Morgo, in the Greek Archipelago, has a quaint
picture of the Blessed Virgin painted on wood, which is reputed
to have been profaned and broken at Cyprus and then miraculously
rejoined in its present shrine. Near by is enacted the pretended
miracle of the Urne, so celebrated in the Archipelago
(Champagnac, I, 129).
Ancona, Italy.-The Cathedral of St. Cyriacus contains a shrine
of the Blessed Virgin which became famous only in 1796. On 25
June of that year, the eyes of the Madonna were seen filled with
tears, which was later interpreted to have prefigured the
calamities that fell on Pius VI and the Church in Italy owing to
Napoleon. The picture was solemnly crowned by Pius VII on 13
May, 1814, under the title "Regina Sanctorum Omnium"
(Champagnac, I, 133; Anon., "Pelerinages aux sanct. de la mere
de Dieu", Paris, 1840).
Anges, Seine-et-Oise, France.-The present chapel only dates from
1808; but the pilgrimage is really ancient. In connexion with
the shrine is a spring of miraculous water (Champagnac, I, 146).
Arcachon, Gironde, France.-It is curious among the shrines of
the Blessed Virgin as containing an alabaster statue of the
thirteenth century. Pius IX granted to this statue the honour of
coronation in 1870, since which time pilgrimages to it have
greatly increased in number and in frequency.
Ardilliers, Saumur, France.-A chapel of the Blessed Virgin
founded on the site of an ancient monastery. It has been visited
by famous French pilgrims such as Anne of Austria, Louis XIII,
Henrietta Maria, etc. The sacristy was built by Cesare, Duke of
Vendome, and in 1634 Cardinal Richelieu added a chapel
(Champagnac, I, 169).
Argenteuil, Seine-et-Oise, France, is one of the places which
boasts of possessing the Holy Coat of Jesus Christ. Its abbey
was also well known as having had as abbess the famous Heloise.
Whatever may be thought of the authenticity of the relic, the
antiquity of pilgrimages drawn to its veneration dates from its
presentation to St. Louis in 1247. From the pilgrimage of Queen
Blanche in 1255 till our own day there has been an almost
uninterrupted flow of visitors. The present chasse was the gift
of the Duchess of Guise in 1680 (Champagnac, I, 171-223).
Aubervilles, Seine, France, an ancient place of pilgrimage from
Paris. It is mentioned in the Calendars of that diocese under
the title of Notre-Dame-des- Vertus, and its feast was
celebrated annually on the second Tuesday in May. An early list
of miraculouos cures performed under the invocation of this
Madonna was printed at Paris in 1617 (Champagnac, I, 246).
Auriesville, Montgomery Co., New York, U. S. A., is the centre
of one of the great pilgrimages of the New World. It is the
scene of martyrdom of three Jesuit missionaries by Mohawk
Indians; but the chapel erected on the spot has been dedicated
to Our Lady of Martyrs, presumably because the cause of the
beatification of the three fathers is as yet uncompleted. 15
August is the chief day of pilgrimage; but the practice of
visiting Auriesville increases yearly in frequency, and lasts
intermittently throughout the whole summer (Wynne, "A Shrine in
the Mohawk Valley", New York, 1905; Gerard in "The Month",
March, 1874, 306).
Bailleul-le-Soc, Oise, France, possesses a chapel dedicated to
the Blessed Virgin, dating from the reign of Louis XIV. It has
received no episcopal authorization, and in fact was condemned
by the Bishop of Beauvais, Mgr de Saint-Aignan, 24 February,
1716. This was in consequence of the pilgrimage which sprang up,
of visiting a well of medicinal waters. Owing to its
health-giving properties, it was called Saine-Fontaine, but, by
the superstition of the people, who at once invented a legend to
account for it, this was quickly changed to Sainte-Fontaine. It
is still a place of veneration; and pilgrims go to drink the
waters of the so-called holy well (Champagnac, I, 264).
Betharram, Basses-Pyrenees, France, one of the oldest shrines in
all France, the very name of which dates from the Saracenic
occupation of the country. A legend puts back the foundation
into the fourth century, but this is certainly several hundred
years too early. In much more recent times a calvary, with
various stations, has been erected and has brought back the flow
of pilgrims. The Basque population round about knows it as one
of its most sacred centres (Champagnac, I, 302-11).
Boher, near Leith Abbey, King's Co., Ireland, contains the
relics of St. Manchan, probably the abbot who died in 664. The
present shrine is of twelfth- century work and is very well
preserved considering its great age and the various calamities
through which it has passed. Pilgrimages to it are organized
from time to time, but on no very considerable scale (Wall,
"Shrines of British Saints", 83-7).
Bonaria, Sardinia, is celebrated for its statue of Our Lady of
Mercy. It is of Italian workmanship, probably about 1370, and
came miraculously to Bomaria, floating on the waters. Every
Saturday local pilgrimages were organized; but to-day it is
rather as an object of devotion to the fisherfolk that the
shrine is popular (Champagnac, I, 1130-1).
Boulogne, France, has the remains of a famous statue that has
been a centre of pilgrimage for many centuries. The early
history of the shrine is lost in the legends of the seventh
century. But whatever was the origin of its foundation there has
always been a close connexion between this particular shrine and
the seafaring population on both sides of the Channel. In
medieval France the pilgrimage to it was looked upon as so
recognized a form of devotion that not a few judicial sentences
are recorded as having been commuted into visits to
Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne-sur-mer. Besides several French monarchs,
Henry III visited the shrine in 1255, the Black Prince and John
of Gaunt in 1360, and later Charles the Bold of Burgundy. So,
too, in 1814 Louis XVIII gave thanks for his restoration before
this same statue. The devotion of Our Lady of Boulogne has been
in France and England increased by the official recognition of
the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Compassion, established at
this shrine, the object of which is to pray for the return of
the English people to the Faith (Champagnac, I, 342-62; Hales in
"Academy", 22 April, 1882, 287).
Bruges, Belgium, has its famous relic of the Holy Blood which is
the centre of much pilgrimage. This was brought from Palestine
by Thierry of Alsace on his return from the Second Crusade. From
7 April, 1150, this relic has been venerated with much devotion.
The annual pilgrimage, attended by the Flemish nobility in their
quaint robes and thousands of pilgrims from other parts of
Christendom, takes place on the Monday following the first
Sunday in May, when the relic is carried in procession. But
every Friday the relic is less solemnly exposed for the
veneration of the faithful (Smith, "Bruges", London, 1901,
passim; cf. "Tablet", LXXXIII, 817).
Buglose, Landes, France, was for long popular as a place of
pilgrimage to a statue of the Blessed Virgin; but it is perhaps
as much visited now as the birthplace of St. Vincent de Paul.
The house where he was born and where he spent his boyhood is
still shown (Champagnac, I, 374-90).
Canterbury, Kent, England, was in medieval times the most famous
of English shrines. First as the birthplace of Saxon
Christianity and as holding the tomb of St. Augustine; secondly
as the scene of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, it fitly
represented the ecclesiastical centre of England. But even from
beyond the island, men and women trooped to the shrine of the
"blissful martyr", especially at the great pardons or jubilees
of the feast every fifty years from 1220 to 1520; his death
caused his own city to become, what Winchester had been till
then, the spiritual centre of England (Belloc, "The Old Road",
London, 1904, 43). The spell of his name in his defence of the
spirituality lay so strongly on the country that Henry VIII had
to make a personal attack on the dead saint before he could hope
to arrogate himself full ecclesiastical authority. The poetry of
Chaucer, the wealth of England, the crown jewels of France, and
marble from ruins of ancient Carthage (a papal gift) had
glorified the shrine of St. Thomas beyond compare; and the
pilgrim signs (see below) which are continually being discovered
all over England and even across the Channel ("Guide to
Mediaeval Room, British Museum", London, 1907, 69-71) emphasize
the popularity of this pilgrimage. The precise time of the year
for visiting Canterbury seems difficult to determine (Belloc,
ibid., 54), for Chaucer says spring, the Continental traditions
imply winter, and the chief gatherings of which we have any
record point to the summer. It was probably determined by the
feasts of the saint and the seasons of the year. Thle place of
the martyrdom has once more become a centre of devotion mainly
through the action of the Guild of Ransom (Wall, "Shrines",
152-171; Belloc, op. cit.; Danks, "Canterbury", London, 1910).
Carmel, Palestine, has been for centuries a sacred mountain,
both for the Hebrew people and for Christians. The Mohammedans
also regard it with devotion, and from the eighteenth century
onwards have joined with Christians and Jews in celebrating the
feast of Elias in the mountain that bears his name.
Ceylon may be mentioned as possessing a curious place of
pilgrimage, Adam Peak. On the summit of this mountain is a
certain impression which the Mohammedans assert to be the
footprint of Adam, the Brahmins that of Rama, the Buddhists that
of Buddha, the Chinese that of Fu, and the Christians of India
that of St. Thomas the Apostle (Champagnac, I, 446).
Chartres is in many respects the most wonderful sanctuary in
Europe dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, as it boasts of an
uninterrupted tradition from the times of the druids who
dedicated there a statue of virgini pariturae. This wonder
statue is said to have been still existing in 1793, but to have
been destroyed during the Revolution. Moreover, to enhance the
sacredness of the place a relic was preserved, presented by
Charlemagne, viz., the chemise or veil of the Blessed Virgin.
Whatever may be the history or authenticity of the relic itself,
it certainly is of great antiquity and resembles the veils now
worn by women in the East. A third scource of devotion is the
present stone image of the Blessed Virgin inaugurated with great
pomp in 1857. The pilgrimages to this shrine at Chartres have
naturally been frequent and of long continuance. Amongst others
who have taken part in these visits of devotion were popes,
kings of France and England, saints like Bernard of Clairvaux,
Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, Vincent de Paul, and
Francis de Sales, and the hapless Mary Queen of Scots. There is,
moreover, an annual procession to the shrine on 15 March
(Champagnac, I, 452-60; Northcote, "Sanct. of the Madonna",
London, 1868, IV, 169-77; Chabarmes, "Hist. de N.-D. de
Chartres", Chartres, 1873).
Chichester, Sussex, England, had in its cathedral the tomb of
St. Richard, its renowned bishop. The throng of pilgrims to this
shrine, made famous by the devotion of Edward I, was so great
that the body was dismembered so as to make three separate
stations. Even then, in 1478, Bishop Storey had to draw up
stringent rules so that the crowd should approach in a more
seemly manner. Each parish was to enter at the west door in the
prescribed order, of which notice had to be given by the parish
priests in their churches on the Sunday preceding the feast.
Besides 3 April, another pilgrimage was made on Whit-Saturday
(Wall, 126-31).
Cologne, Rhenish Germany, as a city of pilgrimage centres round
the shrine of the Three Kings. The relics are reputed to have
been brought by St. Helena to Constantinople, to have been
transferred thence to Milan, and evidently in the twelfth
century to have been carried in triumph by Frederick Barbarossa
to Cologne. The present chasse is considered the most remarkable
example extant of the medieval goldsmith's art. Though of old
reckoned as one of the four greater pilgrimages, it seems to
have lost the power of attracting huge crowds out of devotion;
though many, no doubt, are drawn to it by its splendour
(Champagnac, I, 482).
Compostella, Spain, has long been famous as containing the
shrine of St. James the Greater (q. v., where the authenticity
of the relics etc. is discussed at some length). In some senses
this was the most renowned medieval pilgrimage; and the custom
of those who bore back with them from Galicia scallop shells as
proofs of their journey gradually extended to every form of
pilgrimage. The old feast-day of St. James (5 August) is still
celebrated by the boys of London with their grottos of oyster
shells. The earliest records of visits paid to this shrine date
from the eighth century; and even in recent years the custom has
been enthusiastically observed (cf. Rymer, "Foe;dera", London,
1710, XI, 371, 376, etc.).
Concepcion, Chile, has a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Blessed
Virgin that is perhaps unique, a rock-drawn figure of the Mother
of God. It was discovered by a child in the eighteenth century
and was for long popular among the Chilians.
Cordova, Spain, possesses a curious Madonna which was originally
venerated at Villa Viciosa in Portugal. Because of the neglect
into which it had fallen, a pious shepherd carried it off to
Cordova, whence the Portuguese endeavoured several times to
recover it, being frustrated each time by a miraculous
intervention (Champagnac, I, 525).
Cracow, Poland, is said to possess a miraculous statue of the
Blessed Virgin brought to it by St. Hyacinth, to which in times
past pilgrimages were often made (Acta SS., Aug., III, 317-41).
Croyland, Lincolnshire, England, was the centre of much
pilgrimage at the shrine of St. Guthlac, due principally to the
devotion of King Wiglaf of Mercia (Wall, 116-8).
Czenstochowa, Poland, is the most famous of Polish shrines
dedicated to the Mother of God, where a picture painted on
cypress wood and attributed to St. Luke is publicly venerated.
This is reputed to be the richest sanctuary in the world. A copy
of the picture has been set up in a chapel of St. Roch's church
by the Poles in Paris (Champagnac, I, 540).
Downpatrick, County Down, Ireland, is the most sacred city of
Ireland in that the bodies of Ireland's highest saints were
there interred.
"In the town of Down, buried in one grave
Bridget, Patrick, and the pious Columba."
Nothing need be said here about the relics of these saints; it
is sufficient merely to hint at the pilgrimages that made this a
centre of devotion (Wall, 31-2).
Drumlane, Ireland, was at one time celebrated as containing the
relics of S. Moedoc in the famous Breac Moedoc. This shrine was
in the custody of the local priest till 1846, when it was
borrowed and sold to a Dublin jeweller, from whom in turn it was
bought by Dr. Petrie. It is now in the museum of the Royal Irish
Academy (Wall, 80-3).
Dumfermline, Fife, Scotland, was the resort of countless
pilgrims, for in the abbey was the shrine of St. Margaret. She
was long regarded as the most popular of Scottish saints and her
tomb was the most revered in all that kingdom. Out of devotion
to her, Dumfermline succeeded Iona as being the burial place of
the kings (Wall, 48-50).
Durham, England, possessed many relics which drew to it the
devotion of many visitors. But its two chief shrines were those
of St. Cuthbert and St. Bede. The former was enclosed in a
gorgeous reliquary, which was put in its finished state by John,
Lord Nevill of Raby, in 1372. Some idea may be had of the number
of pilgrims from the amount put by the poorer ones into the
money-box that stood close by. The year 1385-6 yielded -L-63
17s. 8d. which would be equivalent in our money to -L-1277 13s.
4d. A dispute rages round the present relics of St. Cuthbert,
and there is also some uncertainty about the body of St. Bede
(Wall, 176-107, 110-6).
Edmundsbury, Suffolk, England, sheltered in its abbey church the
shrine of St. Edmund, king and martyr. Many royal pilgrims from
King Canute to Henry VI knelt and made offerings at the tomb of
the saint; and the common people crowded there in great numbers
because of the extraordinary miracles worked by the holy martyr
(Wall, 216-23; Mackinlay, "St. Edmund King and Martyr", London,
1893; Snead-Cox, "Life of Cardinal Vaughan", London, 1910, II,
287-94).
Einsiedeln, Schwyz, Switzerland, has been a place of pilgrimage
since Leo VIII in 954. The reason of this devotion is a
miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin brought by St. Meinrad
from Zurich. The saint was murdered in 861 by robbers who
coveted the rich offerings which already at that early date were
left by the pilgrims. The principal days for visiting the shrine
are 14 Sept. and 13 Oct.; it is calculated that the yearly
number of pilgrims exceeds 150,000. Even Protestants from the
surrounding cantons are known to have joined the throng of
worshippers (Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 122-32).
Ely, Cambridgeshire, England, was the centre of a pilgrimage to
the shrine of St. Etheldreda. One of her hands is still
preserved in a shrine in the (pre-Reformation) Catholic church
dedicated to her in London (Wall, 55-6).
Ephesus, Asia Minor, is the centre of two devotions, one to the
mythical Seven Sleepers, the other to the Mother of God, who
lived here some years under the care of St. John. Here also it
was that the Divine maternity of Our Lady was proclaimed, by the
Third OEcumenical Council, a.d. 491 ("Pelerinages aux sanct. de
la mere de Dieu", Paris, 1840, 119-32; Champagnac, I, 608- 19).
Evreux, Eure, France, has a splendid cathedral dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin, but the pilgrimage to it dates only from modern
times (Champagnac, I, 641).
Faviers, Seine-et-Oise, France, is the centre of a pilgrimage to
the church of St. Sulpice, where there are relics of the saint.
St. Louis IX paid his homage at the shrine; and even now, from
each parish of St. Sulpice (a common dedication among French
churches) deputies come here annually on pilgrimage for the
three Sundays following the feast which occurs on 27 August
(Champagnac, I, 646-7).
Garaison, Tarbes, France, was the scene of an apparition of Our
Lady of Good Counsel to a shepherdess of twelve years old,
Aglese de Sagasan, early in the sixteenth century. The sanctuary
was dedicated afresh after the Revolution and is once more
thronged with pilgrims. The chief festival is celebrated on 8
September (Champagnac, I, 95-9).
Genezzano, Italy, contains the miraculous picture of Our Lady of
Good Counsel which is said to have been translated from Albania.
It has, since its arrival 25 April, 1467, been visited by popes,
cardinals, kings, and by countless throngs of pilgrims; and
devotion to the shrine steadily increases (Northcote,
"Sanctuaries", 15-24).
Glastonbury, Somerset, England, has been a holy place for many
centuries and round it cluster legends and memories, such as no
other shrine in England can boast. The Apostles, St. Joseph of
Arimathea, Sts. Patrick and David, and King Arthur begin the
astonishing cycle which is continued by names like St. Dunstan,
etc. The curious thorn which blossomed twice yearly, in May and
at Christmastide, also proved an attraction for pilgrims, though
the story of its miraculous origin does not seem to go back much
before the sixteenth century. A proof of the devotion which the
abbey inspired is seen in the "Pilgrim's Inn," a building of
late fifteenth century work in the Perpendicular style yet
standing in the town (Marson, "Glastonbury. The English
Jerusalem", Bath, 1909).
Grace, Lot-et-Garonne, France, used to be the seat of an ancient
statue of the Blessed Virgin which entered the town in a
miraculous fashion. It was enshirined in a little chapel perched
on the bridge that spans the river Lot. Hence its old name,
Nostro Damo del cap del Pount. Even now some pilgrimages are
made to the restored shrine (Champagnac, I, 702-5).
Grottaferrata, Campagna, Italy, a famous monastery of the Greek
Rite, takes its name (traditionally) from a picture of the
Madonna found, protected by a grille, in a grotto. It is still
venerated in the abbey church, and is the centre of a local
pilgrimage (Champagnac, I, 714-15).
Guadalupe, Estramadura, Spain, is celebrated for its
wonder-working statue of the Blessed Virgin. But it has been
outshone by another shrine of the same name in Mexico, which has
considerably gained in importance as the centre of pilgrimage.
As a sanctuary the latter takes the place of one dedicated to an
old pagan goddess who was there worshipped. The story of the
origin of this shrine (see Guadalupe, Shrine of) is astonishing.
Hal, Belgium, contains a wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin
which is decorated with a golden crown. It has been described by
Justus Lipsius in his "Diva Virgo Hallensis" ("Omnia Opera",
Antwerp, 1637, III, 687- 719); as a place of pilgrimage, it has
been famous in all Europe and has received gifts from many noble
pilgrims. The monstrance given by Henry VIII was lent for use
during the Eucharistic Congress in London in 1909. The miracles
recorded are certainly wonderful.
Holywell, North Wales, still draws large bodies of pilgrims by
its wonderful cures. It has done so continuously for over a
thousand years, remaining the one active example of what were
once very common (Holy Wells, Chalmers, "Book of Days", II,
6-8). The well is dedicated to St. Winefride and is said to mark
the spot of her martyrdom in 634 (Maher, "Holywell in 1894" in
"The Month", February, 1895, 153).
Iona, Scotland, though not properly, until recently, a place of
pilgrimage, can hardly be omitted with propriety from this list.
The mention of it is sufficient to recall memories of its
crowded tombs of kings, chieftains, prelates, which witness to
the honour in which it was held as the Holy Island (Trenholme,
"Story of Iona", Edinburgh, 1909).
Jerusalem, Palestine, was in many ways the origin of all
pilgrimages. It is the first spot to which the Christian turned
with longing eyes. The earliest recorded pilgrimages go back to
the third century with the mention of Bishop Alexander; then, in
the fourth century came the great impulse given by the Empress
Helena who was followed by the Bordeaux Pilgrims and the
"Peregrinatio Silviae" and others (cf. Acta SS., June, III, 176;
Sept., III, 56). The action of St. Jerome and his aristocratic
lady friends made the custom fashionable and the Latin colony
was established by them which made it continuous (Gregory of
Tours, "Hist. Franc.", Paris, 1886, ed. by Omont, II, 68; V,
181; etc.). So too comes the visit of Arnulf, cited by St. Bede
("Eccl. Hist.", V, xv, 263, ed. Giles, London, 1847) from the
writings of Adamnan; of Cadoc the Welsh bishop mentioned below
(cf. St. Andrews); of Probus sent by Gregory I to establish a
hospice in Jerusalem (Acta SS., March, II, S: 23, 150, 158a,
etc.). There are also the legendary accounts of King Arthur's
pilgrimage, and that of Charlemagne (Paris, "Romania", 1880,
1-60; 1902, 404, 616, 618). A few notices occur of the same
custom in the tenth century (Beazley, II, 123), but there is a
lull in these visits to Jerusalem till the eleventh century.
Then, at once, a new stream begins to pour over to the East at
times in small numbers, as Foulque of Nerra in 1011, Meingoz
took with him only Simon the Hermit, and Ulric, later prior of
Zell, was accompanied by one who could chant the psalms with
him; at times also in huge forces as in 1026 under Richard II of
Normandy, in 1033 a record number (Glaber, Paris, 1886, IV, 6,
106, ed. Prou), in 1035 another under Robert the Devil (ibid.,
128), and most famous of all in 1065 that under Gunther, Bishop
of Bamberg, with twelve thousand pilgrims (Lambert of Gersfield,
"Mon. Germ. Hist.", Hanover, 1844, V, 169). This could only lead
to the Crusades which stamped the Holy Land on the memory and
heart of Christendom. The number who took the Cross seems
fabulous (cf. Girandus Cambrensis, "Itin. Cambriae", II, xiii,
147, in R. S., ed. Dimock, 1868); and many who could not go
themselves left instructions for their hearts to be buried there
(cf. Hovenden, "Annals", ed. Stubbs, 1869, in R. S., II, 279;
"Chron. de Froissart", Bouchon, 1853, Paris, 1853, I, 47; cf.
35-7). So eager were men to take the Cross, that some even
branded or cut its mark upon them ("Miracula s. Thomae", by
Abbot Benedict, ed. Giles, 186) or "with a sharpe knyfe he
share, A crosse upon his shoulder bare" ("Syr Isenbras" in
Utterson, "Early Pop. Poetry", London, 1817, I, 83). From the
twelfth century onwards the flow is uninterrupted, Russians
(Beazley, II, 156), Northerners (II, 174), Jews (218-74), etc.
And the end is not yet ("Itinera hierosolymitana saeculi
IV-VIII", ed. Geyer in the "Corp. script. eccl. lat.", 39,
Vienna, 1898; Palestine Pilg. Text Soc., London, 1884 sqq.;
"Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lande", II, Innsbruck,
1900, etc.; Brehier, "L'eglise et l'Orient au moyen-age", Paris,
1907, 10-15, 42-50).
Kavelaer, Guelders, is a daughter-shrine to the Madonna of
Luxemburg, a copy of which was here enshrined in 1642 and
continues to attract pilgrims (Champagnac, I, 875).
La Quercia, Viterbo, Italy, is celebrated for its quaint shrine.
Within the walls of a church built by Bramante is a tabernacle
of marble that enfolds the wonder-working image, painted of old
by Batiste Juzzante and hung up for protection in an oak. A part
of the oak still survives within the shrine, which boasts, as of
old, its pilgrims (Mortier, "Notre Dame de la Quercia",
Florence, 1904).
La Salette, Dauphiney, France, is one of the places where the
Blessed Virgin is said to have appeared in the middle of the
nineteenth century. This is no place to discuss the authenticity
of the apparition. As a place of pilgrimage it dates from 19
Sept., 1846, immediately after which crowds began to flock to
the shrine. The annual number of visitors is computed to be
about 30,000 (Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 178-229).
La Sarte, Huy, Belgium, boasts a shrine of the Blessed Virgin
that dominates the surrounding country. Perched on the top of a
hill, past a long avenue of wayside chapels, is the statue found
by chance in 1621. Year by year during May countless pilgrims
organized in parishes climb the steep ascent in increasing
numbers (Halflants, "Hist. de N.-D. de la Sarte", Huy, 1871).
Laus, Hautes-Alpes, France, is one of the many
seventeenth-century shrines of the Blessed Virgin. There is the
familiar story of an apparition to a shepherdess with a command
to found a church. So popular has this shrine become that the
annual number of pilgrims is said to be close on 80,000. The
chief pilgrimage times are Pentecost and throughout October
(Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 146-59).
Le Puy, Haute-Loire, France, boasts the earliest scene of any of
the Blessed Virgin's apparitions. The legend begins about the
year 50. After the Crusades had commenced, Puy-Notre-Dame became
famous as a sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin throughout all
Christendom. Its great bishop, Adhemar of Montheil, was the
first to take the Cross, and he journeyed to Jerusalem with
Godfrey de Bouillon as legate of the Holy See. The "Salve
Regina" is by some attributed to him, and was certainly often
known as the "Anthem of Puy". Numberless French kings, princes,
and nobles have venerated this sanctuary; St. Louis IX presented
it with a thorn from the Sacred Crown. The pilgrimages that we
read of in connexion with the shrine must have been veritable
pageants, for the crowds, even as late as 1853, exceeded 300,000
in number (Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 160-9).
Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, is one of the places of
pilgrimage which has ceased to be a centre of devotion; for the
relics of St. Chad, cast out of their tomb by Protestant
fanaticism, have now found a home in a Catholic church (the
Birmingham cathedral), and it is to the new shrine that the
pilgrims turn (Wall, 97-102).
Liesse, Picardy, France, was before the rise of Lourdes the most
famous centre in France of pilgrimage to the Blessed Virgin. The
date of its foundation is pushed back to the twelfth century and
the quaint story of its origin connects it with Christian
captives during the Crusades. Its catalogue of pilgrims reads
like an "Almanach de Gotha"; but the numberless unnamed pilgrims
testify even more to its popularity. It is still held in honour
(Champagnac, I, 918- 22).
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, in its splendid cathedral
guarded the relics of its bishop, St. Hugh. At the entombment in
1200, two kings and sixteen bishops, at the translation in 1280,
one king, two queens, and many prelates took part. The inflow of
pilgrims was enormous every year till the great spoliation under
Henry VIII (Wall, 130-40).
Loges, Seine-et-Oise, France, was a place much frequented by
pilgrims because of the shrine of St. Fiacre, an Irish solitary.
In 1615 it became, after a lapse of some three centuries, once
more popular, for Louis XIII paid several visits there. Among
other famous worshippers were James II and his queen from their
place of exile at St.-Germain. The chief day of pilgrimage was
the feast of St. Stephen, protomartyr (26 December). It was
suppressed in 1744 (Champagnac, I, 934-5).
Loreto, Ancona, Italy, owing to the ridicule of one half of the
world and the devotion of the other half, is too well-known to
need more than a few words. Nor is the authenticity of the
shrine to be here at all discussed. As a place of pilgrimage it
will be sufficient to note that Dr. Stanley, an eyewitness,
pronounced it to be "undoubtedly the most frequented shrine in
Christendom" (Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 65-106; Dolan in "The
Month", August, 1894, 545; cf. ibid., February, 1867, 178-83).
Lourdes, Pyrenees, France, as a centre of pilgrimage is without
rival in popularity throughout the world. A few statistics are
all that shall be recorded here. From 1867 to 1903 inclusively
4271 pilgrimages passed to Lourdes numbering some 387,000
pilgrims; the last seven years of this period average 150
pilgrimages annually. Again within thirty-six years (1868 to
1904) 1643 bishops (including 63 cardinals) have visited the
grotto; and the Southern Railway Company reckon that Lourdes
station receives over a million travellers every yeard (Bertrin,
"Lourdes", tr. Gibbs, London, 1908; "The Month":, October, 1905,
359; February, 1907, 124).
Luxemburg possesses a shrine of the Blessed Virgin under the
title of "Consoler of the Afflicted". It was erected by the
Jesuit Fathers and has become much frequented by pious pilgrims
from all the country round. The patronal feast is the first
Sunday of July, and on that day and the succeeding octave the
chapel is crowded. Whole villages move up, headed by their
parish priests; and the number of the faithful who frequent the
sacraments here is sufficient justification for the numerous
indulgences with which this sanctuary is enriched (Champagnac,
I, 985-97).
Lyons, Rhone, France, boasts a well-known pilgrimage to
Notre-Dame-de-Fourvieres. This shrine is supposed to have taken
the place of a statue of Mercury in the forum of Old Lugdunum.
But the earliest chapel was utterly destroyed by the Calvinists
in the sixteenth century and again during the Revolution. The
present structure dates from the reinauguration by Pius VII in
person, 19 April, 1805. It is well to remember that Lyons was
ruled by St. Irenaeus who was famed for his devotion to the
Mother of God (Champagnac, I, 997-1014).
Malacca, Malay Peninsula, was once possessed of a shrine set up
by St. Francis Xavier, dedicated under the title Our Lady of the
Mount. It was for some years after his death (and he was buried
in this chapel, before the translation of his relics to Goa, cf.
"The Tablet", 31 Dec., 1910, p. 1055), a centre of pilgrimage.
When Malacca passed from Portuguese to Dutch rule, the exercise
of the Catholic religion was forbidded, and the sanctuary became
a ruin (Champagnac, I, 1023-5).
Mantua, Lombardy, Italy, has outside the city walls a beautiful
church, S. Maria della Grazie, dedicated by the noble house of
Gonzaga to the Mother of God. It enshrines a picture of the
Madonna painted on wood and attributed to St. Luke. Pius II,
Charles V, the Constable of Bourbon are among the many pilgrims
who have visited this sanctuary. The chief season of pilgrimage
is about the feast of the Assumption (15 August), when it is
computed that over one hundred thousand faithful have some years
attended the devotions (Champagnac, I, 1042).
Maria-Stein, near Basle, Switzerland, is the centre of a
pilgrimage. An old statue of the Blessed Virgin, no doubt the
treasure of some unknown hermit, is famed for its miracles. To
it is attached a Benedictine monastery-a daughter-house to
Einsiedeln (Champagnac, I, 1044).
Mariazell, Styria, a quaint village, superbly situated but badly
built, possesses a tenth- century statue of the Madonna. To it
have come almost all the Habsburgs on pilgrimage, and Maria
Theresa left there, after her visit, medallions of her husband
and her children. From all the country round, from Carinthia,
Bohemia, and the Tyrol, the faithful flock to the shrine during
June and July. The Government used to decree the day on which
the pilgrims from Vienna were to meet in the capital at the old
Cathedral of St. Stephen and set out in ordered bands for their
four days' pilgrimage (Champagnac, I, 1045-7).
Marseilles, France, as a centre of pilgrimage has a noble
shrine, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. Its chapel, on a hill beyond the
city, dominates the neighbourhood, where is the statue, made by
Channel in 1836 to take the place of an older one destroyed
during the Revolution (Champagnac, I, 1062).
Mauriac, Cantal, France, is visited because of the
thirteenth-century shrine dedicated to Notre-Dame-des-Miracles.
The statue is of wood, quite black. The pilgrimage day is
annually celebrated on 9 May (Champagnac, I, 1062).
Messina, Sicily, the luckless city of earthquake, has a
celebrated shrine of the Blessed Virgin. It was peculiar among
all shrines in that it was supposed to contain a letter written
or rather dictated by the Mother of God, congratulating the
people of Messina on their conversion to Christianity. During
the destruction of the city in 1908, the picture was crushed in
the fallen cathedral (Thurston in "The Tablet", 23 Jan., 1908,
123-5).
Montaigu, Belgium, is perhaps the most celebrated of Belgian
shrines raised to the honour of the Blessed Virgin. All the year
round pilgrimages are made to the statue; and the number of
offerings day by day is extraordinary.
Montmartre, Seine, France, has been for centuries a place of
pilgrimage as a shrine of the Mother of God. St. Ignatius came
here with his first nine companions to receive their vows on 15
Aug., 1534. But it is famous now rather as the centre of
devotion to the Sacred Heart, since the erection of the National
Basilica there after the war of 1870 (Champagnac, I, 1125-46).
Montpellier, Herault, France, used to possess a famous statue of
black wood-Notre- Dame-des-Tables. Hidden for long within a
silver statue of the Blessed Virgin, life-size, it was screened
from public view, till it was stolen by the Calvinists and has
since disappeared from history. From 1189 the feast of the
Miracles of Mary was celebrated with special Office at
Montpellier on 1 Sept., and throughout an octave (Champagnac, I,
1147).
Mont St-Michel, Normandy, is the quaintest, most beautiful, and
interesting of shrines. For long it was the centre of a famous
pilgrimage to the great archangel, whose power in times of war
and distress was earnestly implored. Even to-day a few bands of
peasants, and here and there a devout pilgrim, come amid the
crowds of visitors to honour St. Michael as of old (Champagnac,
I, 1151).
Montserrat, Spain, lifts itself above the surrounding country in
the same way as it towers above other Spanish centres of
pilgrimage to the Blessed Virgin. Its existence can be traced to
the tenth century, but it was not a centre of much devotion till
the thirteenth. The present church was only consecrated on 2
Feb., 1562. It is still much sought after in pilgrimage
(Champagnac, I, 1152-73).
Naples, Italy, is a city which has been for many centuries and
for many reasons a centre of pilgrimage. Two famous shrines
there are the Madonna del Carmine and Santa Maria della Grotta
(Northcote, "Sanctuaries", 1007-21; see also Januarius, Saint.)
Oostacker, Ghent, Belgium, is one of the famous daughter-shrines
of Lourdes. Built in imitation of that sanctuary and having some
of the Lourdes water in the pool of the grotto, it has almost
rivalled its parent in the frequency of its cures. Its
inauguration began with a body of 2000 pilgrims, 29 July, 1875,
since which time there has been a continuous stream of devout
visitors. One has only to walk out there from Ghent on an
ordinary afternoon to see many worshippers, men, women, whole
parishes with their cures, etc., kneeling before the shrine or
chanting before the Blessed Sacrament in the church
(Scheerlinck, "Lourdes en Flandre", Ghent, 1876).
Oxford, England, contained one of the premier shrines of
Britain, that of St. Frideswide. Certainly her relics were
worthy of grateful veneration, especially to Oxford dwellers,
for it is to her that the city and univerrsity alike appear to
owe their existence. Her tomb (since restored at great pains,
1890) was the resort of many pilgrims. Few English kings cared
to enter Oxford at all; but the whole university, twice a year,
i.e. mid-Lent and Ascension Day, headed by the chancellor, came
in solemn procession to offer their gifts. The Catholics of the
city have of late years reorganized the pilgrimage on the
saint's feast-day, 19 Oct. (Wall, 63-71).
Padua, Italy, is the centre of a pilgrimage to the relics of St.
Anthony. In a vast choir behind the sanctuary of the church that
bears his name is the treasury of St. Anthony; but his body
reposes under the high altar. Devotion to this saint has
increased so enormously of late years that no special days seem
set apart for pilgrimages. They proceed continuously all the
year round (Cherance, "St. Anthony of Padua", tr. London, 1900).
Pennant Melangell, Montgomery, Wales, to judge from the
sculptured fragments of stone built into the walls of the church
and lych gate, was evidently a place of note, where a shrine was
built to St. Melangell, a noble Irish maiden. The whole
structure as restored stands over eight feet high and originally
stood in the Cell-y-Bedd, or Cell of the Grave, and was clearly
a centre of pilgrimage (Wall, 48).
Pontigny, Yvonne, France, was for many centuries a place of
pilgrimage as containing the shrine of St. Edmund of Canterbury.
Special facilities were allowed by the French king for English
pilgrims. The Huguenots despoiled the shrine, but the relics
were saved to be set up again in a massive chasse of
eighteenth-century workmanship. In spite of the troubles in
France the body remains in its old position, and is even
carefully protected by the Government (Wall, 171-5).
Puche, Valencia, Spain, is the great Spanish sanctuary dedicated
to Our Lady of Mercy, in honour of wom the famous Order of Mercy
came into being through Spanish saints. The day of pilgrimage
was the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, 24 Sept. (Champagnac, II,
488-92).
Rocamadour, Lot, France, was the centre of much devotion as a
shrine of the Blessed Virgin. Amongst its pilgrims may be named
St. Dominic; and the heavy mass of from iron hanging outside the
chapel witnesses to the legendary pilgrimage of Roland, whose
good sword Durendal was deposited there till it was stolen with
the other treasures by Henry II's turbulent eldest son, Henry
Court Mantel (Drane, "Hist. of St. Dominic", London, 1891,
301-10; Laporte, "Guide du pelerin `a Rocamadour", Rocamadour,
1862).
Rocheville, Toulouse, France.-The legend of the origin fixes the
date of its apparition of the Blessed Virgin as 1315. Long
famous, then long neglected, it has once more been restored.
During the octave of the Nativity of Our Lady (8-15 Sept.) it is
visited by quite a large body of devout pilgrims (Champagnac,
II, 101).
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contains a sanctuary dedicated to Our
Lady of Travel. This statue is in a convent of nuns situated
just outside the city, on the east of the bay. It is devoutly
venerated by the pious people of Brazil, who invoke the
protection of the Blessed Virgin on their journeys (Champagnac,
II, 517-8).
Rome, Italy, has had almost as much influence on the rise of
Christian pilgrimages as the Holy Land. The sacred city of the
Christian world, where lay the bodies of the twin prince
Apostles, attracted the love of every pious Christian. We have
quoted the words of St. Chrysostom, who yearned to see the
relics of St. Paul; and his desire has been expressed in action
in every age of Christian time. The early records of every
nation (of the histories of Eusebius, Zosimus, Socrates, Bede,
etc. passim) give name after name of bishop, king, noble,
priest, layman who have journeyed to visit as pilgrims the
limina Apostolorum. Full to repletion as the city is with relics
of Christian holiness, the "rock on which the Church is built"
has been the chief attraction; and Bramante has well made it the
centre of his immortal temple. Thus St. Marcius came with his
wife Martha and his two sons all the way from Persia in 269; St.
Paternus from Alexandria in 253; St. Maurus from Africa in 284.
Again Sts. Constantine and Victorian on their arrival at Rome
went straight to the tomb of St. Peter, where soldiers caught
them and put them to death. So also St. Zoe was found praying at
the tomb of St. Peter and martyred. Even then in these early
days the practice of pilgrimages was in full force, so that the
danger of death did not deter men from it (Barnes, "St. Peter in
Rome", London, 1901, 146). Then to overleap the centuries we
find records of the Saxon and Danish kings of England trooping
Romewards, so that the very name of Rome has become a verb to
express the idea of wandering (Low Lat., romerus; Old Fr.,
romieu; Sp., romero; Port., romeiro; A. S., romaign; M. E.
romen; Modern, roam). And of the Irish, the same uninterrupted
custom has held good till our own day (Ulster Archaeolog. Jour.,
VII, 238-42). Of the other nations there is no need to speak.
It is curious, however, to note that though the chief shrine of
Rome was undoubtedly the tomb of the Apostles-to judge from all
the extant records-yet the pilgrim sign (see below) which most
commonly betokened a palmer from Rome was the "vernicle" or
reproduction of St. Veronica's veil. Thus Chaucer (Bell's
edition, London, 1861, 105) describes the pardoner:-
"That strait was comen from the Court of Rome
A vernicle had he served upon his cappe".
However, there was besides a medal with a reproduction of the
heads of Sts. Peter and Paul and another with the crossed keys.
These pilgrimages to Rome, of which only a few early instances
have been given, have increased of late years, for the prisoner
of the Vatican, who cannot go out to his children, has become,
since 1870, identified with the City of the Seven Hills in a way
that before was never for long experienced. Hence the pope is
looked upon as embodying in his person the whole essence of
Rome, so that to-day it is the pope who is the living tomb of
St. Peter. All this has helped to increase the devotion and love
of the Catholic world for its central city and has enormously
multiplied the annual number of pilgrims. Within the city
itself, mention must just be made of the celebrated pilgrimage
to the seven churches, a devotion so dear to the heart of St.
Philip (Capecelatro, "Life of St. Philip", tr. Pope, London,
1894, I, 106, 238, etc.). His name recalls the great work he did
for the pilgrims who came to Rome. He established his
Congregation of the Trinit`a dei Pellegrini (ibid., I, 138-54),
the whole work of which was to care for and look after the
thronging crowds who came every year, more especially in the
years of jubilee. Of course, many such hospices already existed.
The English College had originally been a home for Saxon
pilgrims; and there were and are many others. But St. Philip
gave the movement a new impetus.
St. Albans, Hertford, England, was famous over Europe in the
Middle Ages. This is the more curious as the sainted martyr was
no priest or monk, but a simple layman. The number of royal
pilgrims practically includes the whole list of English kings
and queens, but especially devoted to the shrine were Henry III,
Edward I, Edward II, Richard II. During the last century the
broken pieces of the demolished shrine (to the number of two
thousand fragments) were patiently fitted together, and now
enable the present generation to picture the beauty it presented
to the pilgrims who thronged around it (Wall, II, 35-43).
St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.-Though more celebrated as a royal
burgh and as the seat of Scotland's most ancient university, its
earlier renown came to it as a centre of pilgrimage. Even as far
back as the year 500 we find a notice of the pilgriimages made
by the Welsh bishop, Cadoc. He went seven times to Rome, thrice
to Jerusalem, and once to St. Andrews (Acta SS., Jan., III,
219).
St. David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales, was so celebrated a place of
pilgrimage that William I went there immediately after the
conquest of England. The importance of this shrine and the
reverence in which the relics of St. David were held may be
gathered from the papal Decree that two pilgrimages here were
equal to one to Rome (Wall, 91-5).
St. Anne d'Auray, Vannes, Brittany, a centre of pilgrimage in
one of the holiest cities of the Bretons, celebrated for its
pardons in honour of St. Anne. The principal pilgrimages take
place at Pentecost and on 26 July.
Ste Anne de Beaupre, Quebec, Canada, has become the most popular
centre of pilgrimage in all Canada within quite recent years. A
review, or pious magazine, "Les Annales de la Bonne S. Anne",
has been founded to increase the devotion of the people; and the
zeal of the Canadian clergy has been displayed in organizing
parochial pilgrimages to the shrine. The Eucharistic Congress,
held at Montreal in 1910, also did a great deal to spread abroad
the fame of this sanctuary.
Sainte-Baume.-S. Maximin, Toulouse, France, is the centre of a
famous pilgrimage to the supposed relics of St. Mary Magdalene.
The historical evidence against the authentication of the tombs
is extraordinarily strong and has not been really seriously
answered. The pilgrimages, however, continue; and devout
worshippers visit the shrine, if not of, at least, dedicated to,
St. Mary Magdalene. The arguments against the tradition have
been marshalled and fully set out by Mgr Duchesne ("Fastes
episcopaux de l'ancienne Gaul", Paris, 1894-1900) and appeared
in English form in "The Tablet", XCVI (1900), 88, 282, 323, 365,
403, 444.
St. Patrick's Purgatory, Donegal, Ireland, has been the centre
of a pilgrimage from far remote days. The legends that describe
its foundation are full of Dantesque episodes which have won for
the shrine a place in European literature. It is noticed by the
medieval chroniclers, found its way into Italian prose, was
dramatized by Calderon, is referred to by Erasmus, and its
existence seems implied in the remark of Hamlet, concerning the
ghost from purgatory: "Yes by St. Patrick but there is, Horatio"
(Act I, sc. V). Though suppressed even before the Reformation,
and of course during the Penal Times, it is still
extraordinarily popular with the Irish people, for whom it is a
real penitential exercise. It seems the only pilgrimage of
modern times conducted like those of the Middle Ages (Chambers,
"Book of Days", London, I, 725-8, Leslie in "The Tablet", 1910).
Saragossa, Aragon, Spain, is celebrated for its famous shrine
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin under the title Nuestra Senora
del Pilar. Tradition asserts that the origin of this statue goes
back to the time of St. James, when, in the lifetime of the
Mother of God, it was set up by order of the Apostle. This was
approved by Callistus III in 1456. It is glorious on account of
the many miracles performed there, and is the most popular of
all the shrines of the Blessed Virgin in the Peninsula and the
most thronged with pilgrims (Acta SS., July, VII, 880-900).
Savona, Genoa, Italy, claims to possess the oldest sanctuary
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in all Italy, for to it
Constantine is said to have gone on pilgrimage. The statue was
solemnly crowned by Pius VII, not while spending his five years
of captivity in the city, but later, i. e., on 10 May, 1815,
assisted by King Victor Emmanuel and the royal family of Savoy
(Champagnac, II, 852-7).
Teneriffe, Canary Islands, has a statue of the Blessed Virgin
which tradition asserts was found by the pagan inhabitants and
worshipped as some strange deity for a hundred years or so. For
some time after the conversion of the islanders it was a centre
of pilgrimage (Champagnac, II, 926-7).
Toledo, New Castile, Spain, in its gorgeous cathedral enshrines
a statue of the Blessed Virgin in a chapel of jasper, ornamented
with magnificent and unique treasures. This centre of devotion
to the Blessed Virgin which draws to it annually a great number
of pilgrims, is due to the tradition of the apparition to St.
Ildephonsus (Champagnac, II, 944-6).
Tortosa, Syria, was in the Middle Ages famous for a shrine of
the Blessed Virgin, which claimed to be the most ancient in
Christendom. There is a quaint story about a miracle there told
by Joinville who made a pilgrimage to the shrine, when he
accompanied St. Louis to the East (Champagnac, II, 951).
Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France, has long been celebrated for the
tomb of St. Martin, to which countless pilgrims journeyed before
the Revolution (Goldie in "The Month", Nov., 1880, 331).
Trier, Rhenish Prussia, has boasted for fifteen centuries of the
possession of the Holy Coat. This relic, brought back by St.
Helena from the Holy Land, has been the centre of pilgrimage
since first date. It has been several times exposed to the
faithful and each time has drawn countless pilgrims to its
veneration. In 1512 the custom of an exposition taking place
every seven years was begun, but it has been often interrupted.
The last occasion on which the Holy Coat was exhibited for
public veneration was in 1891, when 1,900,000 of the faithful in
a continual stream passed before the relic (Clarke, "A
Pilgrimage to the Holy Coat of Treves", London, 1892).
Turin, Piedmont, Italy, is well known for its extraordinary
relic of the Holy Winding-Sheet or Shroud. Whatever may be said
against its authenticity, it is an astonishing relic, for the
impression which it bears in negative of the body of Jesus
Christ could with difficulty have been added by art. The face
thereon impressed agrees remarkably with the traditional
portraits of Christ. Naturally the exposition of the sacred
relic are the occasions of numerous pilgrimages (Thurston in
"The Month", January, 1903, 17 February, 162).
Vallambrosa, Tuscany, Italy, has become a place of pilgrimage,
even though the abbey no longer contains its severe and
picturesque throng of monks. Its romatic site has made it a
ceaseless attraction to minds like those of Dante, Ariosto,
Milton, etc.; and Benvenuto Cellini tells us that he too made a
pilgrimage to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin there to thank
her for the many beautiful works of art he had composed; and as
he went he sang and prayed (Champagnac, II, 1033-7).
Walsingham, Norfolk, England, contained England's greatest
shrine of the Blessed Virgin. The chapel dates from 1061, almost
from which time onward it was the most frequented Madonna
sanctuary in the island, both by foreigners and the Englsih.
Many of the English kings went to it on pilgrimage; and the
destruction of it weighed most heavily of all his misdeeds on
the conscience of the dying Henry VIII. Erasmus in his
"Religious Pilgrimage" ("Colloquies", London, 1878, II, 1-37)
has given a most detailed account of the shrine, though his
satire on the whole devotion is exceptionally caustic. Once
more, annually, pilgrimages to the old chapel have been revived;
and the pathetic "Lament of Walsingham" is ceasing to be true to
actual facts ("The Month", Sept., 1901, 236; Bridgett, "Dowry of
Mary", London, 1875, 303-9).
Westminster, London, England, contained one of the seven
incorrupt bodies of saints of England (Acta SS., Aug., I, 276),
i. e., that of St. Edward the Confessor, the only one which yet
remains in its old shrine and is still the centre of pilgrimage.
From immediately after the king's death, his tomb was carefully
tended, especially by the Norman kings. At the suggestion of St.
Thomas Becket a magnificent new shrine was prepared by Henry II
in 1163, and the body of the saint there translated on 13 Oct.
At once pilgrims began to flock to the tomb for miracles, and to
return thanks for favours, as did Richard I, after his captivity
(Radulph Coggeshall, "Chron. Angl.", in R. S., ed. Stevenson,
1875, 63). So popular was this last canonized English king, that
on the rebuilding of the abbey by Henry III St. Edward's tomb
really overshadowed the primary dedication to St. Peter. The
pilgrim's sign was a king's head surmounting a pin. The step on
which the shrine stands was deeply worn by the kneeling
pilgrims, but it has been relaid so that the hollows are now on
the inner edge. Once more this sanctuary, too, has become a
centre of pilgrimage (Stanley, "Mem. of Westminster", London,
1869, passim; Wall, 223-35).
GARB
In older ages, the pilgrim had a special garb which betokened
his mission. This has been practically omitted in modern times,
except among the Mohammedans, with whom ihram still
distinguishes the Hallal and Hadj from the rest of the people.
As far as one can discover, the dress of the medieval pilgrim
consisted of a loose frock or long smock, over which was thrown
a separate hood with a cape, much after the fashion of the
Dominican and Servite habit. On his head, he wore a low-crowned,
broad-brimmed hat, such as is familiar to us from the armorial
bearings of cardinals. This was in wet and windy weather secured
under his chin by two strings, but strings of such length that
when not needed the hat could be thrown off and hang behind the
back. Across his breast passed a belt from which was suspended
his wallet, or script, to contain his relics, food, money, and
what-not. In some illuminations it may be noted as somehow
attached to his side (cf. blessing infra). In one hand he held a
staff, composed of two sticks swathed tightly together by a
withy band. Thus in the grave of Bishop Mayhew (d. 1516), which
was opened a few years ago in Hereford cathedral, there was
found a stock of hazel-wood between four and five feet long and
about the thickness of a finger. As there were oyster shells
also buried in the same grave, it seems reasonable to suppose
that this stick was the bishop's pilgrim staff; but it has been
suggested recently that it represents a crosier of a rough kind
used for the burial of prelates (Cox and Harvey, "Church
Furniture", London, 1907, 55). Occasionally these staves were
put to uses other than those for which they were intended. Thus
on St. Richard's day, 3 April, 1487, Bishop Story of Chichester
had to make stringent regulations, for there was such a throng
of pilgrims to reach the tomb of the saint that the struggles
for precedence led to blows and the free use of the staves on
each other's heads. In one case a death had resulted. To prevent
a recurrence of this disorder, banners and crosses only were to
be carried (Wall, 128). Some, too, had bells in their hands or
other instruments of music: "some others pilgrimes will have
with them baggepipes; so that everie towne that they came
through, what with the noice of their singing and with the sound
of their piping and with the jangling of their Canterburie
bells, and with the barking out of dogges after them, that they
make more noice then if the King came there away with all his
clarions and many other minstrels" (Fox, "Acts", London, 1596,
493).
This distinctive pilgrim dress is described in most medieval
poems and stories (cf. "Renard the Fox", London, 1886, 13, 74,
etc.; "Squyr of Lowe Degree", ed. Ritson in "Metrical
Romancees", London, 1802, III, 151), most minutely and, of
course, indirectly, and very late by Sir Walter Raleigh:-
"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet.
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of Salvation,
My gown of glory (hope's true gage),
And then I'll take my pilgrimage."
(Cf. Furnivall, "The Stacions of Rome and the Pilgrim's Sea
Voyage".) In penance they went alone and barefoot. AEneas
Sylvius Piccolomini tells of his walking without shoes or
stockings through the snow to Our Lady of Whitekirk in East
Lothian, a tramp of ten miles; and he remembered the intense
cold of that pilgrimage to his life's end (Paul, "Royal
Pilgrimages in Scotland" in "Trans. of Scottish Ecclesiological
Soc.", 1905), for it brought on a severe attack of gout
(Boulting, "AEneas Sylvius", London, 1908, 60).
Pilgrim Signs
A last part of the pilgrim's attire must be mentioned, the
famous pilgrim signs. These were badges sewn on to the hat or
hung round the neck or pinned on the clothes of the pilgrim.
"A bolle and a bagge
He bar by his syde
And hundred ampulles;
On his hat seten
Signes of Synay,
And Shelles of Galice,
And many a conche
On his cloke,
And keys of Rome,
And the Vernycle bi-fore
For men sholde knowe
And se bi hise signes
Whom he sought hadde"
(Piers Plowman, ed. Wright, London, 1856, I, 109). There are
several moulds extant in which these signs were cast (cf.
British Museum; Musee de Lyon; Musee de Cluny, Paris; etc.), and
not a few signs themselves have been picked up, especially in
the beds of rivers, evidently dropped by the pilgrims from the
ferry-boats. These signs protected the pilgrims from assault and
enabled them to pass through even hostile ranks ("Paston
Letters", I, 85; Forgeais, "Coll. de plombs histories", Paris,
1863, 52-80; "Archaeol. Jour.", VII, 400; XIII, 105), but as the
citation from Piers Plowman shows, they were also to show "whom
he sought hadde". Of course the cross betokened the crusader
(though one could also take the cross against the Moors of
Spain, Simeon of Durham, "Hist. de gestis regum Angliae", ed.
Twysden, London, 1652, I, 249), and the colour of it the nation
to which he belonged, the English white, the French red, the
Flemish green (Matthew Paris, "Chron. majora", ed. Luard,
London, 1874, II, 330, an. 1199, in R. S.); the pilgrim to
Jerusalem had two crossed leaves of palm (hence the name
"palmer"); to St. Catherine's tomb on Mount Sinai, the wheel; to
Rome, the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul or the keys or the
vernicle (this last also might mean Genoa where there was a
rival shrine of St. Veronica's veil); to St. James of
Compostella the scallop or oyster shell; to Canterbury, a bell
or the head of the saint on a brooch or a leaden ampulla filled
with water from a well near the tomb tinctured with an
infinitesimal drop of the martyr's blood ("Mat. for Hist. of
Thomas Beckett", 1878 in R. S., II, 269; III, 152, 187); to
Walsingham, the virgin and child; to Amiens, the head of St.
John the Baptist, etc. Then there was the horn of St. Hubert,
the comb of St. Blaise, the axe of St. Olave, and so on. And
when the tomb was reached, votive offerings were left of jewels,
models of limbs that had been miraculously cured, spears, broken
fetters. etc. (Rock, "Church of our Fathers", London, 1852, III,
463).
EFFECTS
Among the countless effects which pilgrimages produced the
following may be set down:
Towns-Matthew Paris notes ("Chron. major." in R. S., I, 3, an.
1067) that in England (and the same thing really applies all
over Europe) there was hardly a town where there did not lie the
bodies of martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins, and though no
doubt in very many cases it was the importance of the towns that
made them the chosen resting-places of the saint's relics, in
quite as many others the importance of the saint drew so many
religious pilgrims to it that the town sprang up into real
significance. So it has been noted that Canterbury, at least,
outshone Winchester, and since the Reformation has once more
dwindled into insignificance. Bury Saint Edmunds, St. Albans,
Walsingham, Compostella, Lourdes, La Salette have arisen, or
grown, or decayed, accordingly as the popularity among pilgrims
began, advanced, declined.
Roads were certainly made in many cases by the pilgrims. They
wore out a path from the sea- coast to Canterbury and joined
Walsingham to the great centres of English life and drove tracks
and paths across the Syrian sands to the Holy City. And men and
women for their soul's sake made benefactions so as to level
down and up, and to straighten out the wandering ways that led
from port to sanctuary and from shrine to shrine (Digby,
"Compitum", London, 1851, I, 408). Thus they hoped to get their
share also in the merits of the pilgrim. The whole subject has
been illuminated in a particular instance by a monograph of
Hillaire Belloc in the "Old Road" (London, 1904).
Geography too sprang from the same source. Each pilgrim who
wrote an account of his travels for the instruction and
edification of his fellows was unconsciously laying the
foundations of a new science; and it is astonishing how very
early these written accounts begin. The fourth century saw them
rise, witnessed the publication of many "Peregrinationes" (cf.
Palestine Pilg. Text Soc., passim), and started the fashion of
writing these day-to-day descriptions of the countries through
which they journeyed. It is only fair to mention with especial
praise the names of the Dominicans Ricaldo da Monte Cruce (1320)
and Bourchard of Mount Sion (Beazley, II, 190, 383), the latter
of whom has given measurements of several Biblical sites, the
accuracy of which is testified to by modern travellers. Again we
know that Roger of Sicily caused the famous work "The Book of
Roger, or the Delight of whoso loves to make the Circuit of the
World" (1154) to be compiled, from information gathered from
pilgrims and merchants, who were made to appear before a select
committee of Arabs (Symonds, "Sketches in Italy", Leipzig, 1883,
I, 249); and we even hear of a medieval Continental guidebook to
the great shrines, prefaced by a list of the most richly
indulgenced sanctuaries and containing details of where money
could be changed, where inns and hospitals were to be found,
what roads were safest and best, etc. ("The Month", March, 1909,
295; "Itineraries of William Wey", ed. for Roxburgh Club,
London, 1857; Thomas, "De passagis in Terram Sanctam", Venice,
1879; Bounardot and Longnon, "Le saint voyage de Jherusalem du
Seigneur d'Auglure", Paris, 1878).
Crusades also naturally arose out of the idea of pilgrimages. It
was these various peregrinationes made to the Sepulchre of Jesus
Christ that at all familiarized people with the East. Then came
the huge columns of devout worshippers, growing larger and
larger, becoming more fully organized, and well protected by
armed bands of disciplined troops. The most famous pilgrimage of
all, that of 1065, which numbered about 12,000, under Gunther,
Bishop of Bamberg, assisted by the Archbishop of Mainz, and the
Bishops of Ratisbon and Utrecht, was attacked by Bedouins after
it had left Caesarea. The details of that Homeric struggle were
brought home to Europe (Lambert of Gersfield, "Mon. Germ.
Hist.", 1844, V, 169) and at once gave rise to Crusades.
Miracle Plays are held to be derived from returning pilgrims.
This theory is somewhat obscurely worked out by Pere Monestrier
(Representations en musique anc. et modernes; cf. Champagnac, I,
9). But he bases his conclusions on the idea that the miracle
plays begin by the story of the Birth or Death of Christ and
holds that the return to the West of those who had visited the
scenes of the life of Christ naturally led them to reproduce
these as best they could for their less fortunate brethren (St.
Aug., "De civ. Dei" in P. L., XXXVIII, 764). Hence the miracle
plays that deal with the story of Christ's Passion were imported
for the benefit of those who were unable to visit the very
shrines. But the connexion between the pilgrimages and these
plays comes out much more clearly when we realize that the scene
of the martyrdom of the saint or some legend concerning one of
the miracles was not uncommonly acted before his shrine or
during the pilgrimage that was being made to it. It was
performed in order to stimulate devotion, and to teach the
lessons of his life to those who probably knew little about him.
It was one way and the most effective way of seeing that the
reason for visiting the shrine was not one of mere idle
superstition, but that it had a purpose to achieve in the moral
imporvement of the pilgrim.
International Communications owed an enormous debt to the
continued interchange of pilgrims. Pilgrimages and wars were
practically the only reasons that led the people of one country
to visit that of another. It may safely be hazarded that an
exceedingly large proportion of the foreigners who came to
England, came on purpose to venerate the tomb of the "Holy
blissful Martyr", St. Thomas Becket. Special enactments allowed
pilgrims to pass unmolested through districts that were in the
throes of war. Again facilities were granted, as at Pontigny,
for strangers to visit the shrines of their own saints in other
lands. The result of this was naturally to increase
communications between foreign countries. The matter of
road-making has been already alluded to and the establishment of
hospices along the lines of march, as the ninth-century
monastery at Mount Cenis, or in the cities most frequented by
pilgrims, fulfilled the same purpose (Acta SS., March, II, 150,
157; Glaber, "Chron." in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script, VII, 62).
Then lastly it may be noted that we have distinct notices,
scattered, indirect, and yet all the more convincing, that
pilgrims not unfrequently acted as postmen, carrying letters
from place to place as they went; and that people even waited
with their notes written till a stray pilgrim should pass along
the route (Paston Letters, II, 62).
Religious Orders began to be founded to succour the pilgrims,
and these even the most famous orders of the medieval Church.
The Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, as their name
implies, had as their office to guard the straggling bands of
Latin Christians; the Knights of Rhodes had the same work to
carry out; as also had the Knights Templars. In fact the seal of
these last represented simply a knight rescuing a helpless
pilgrim (compare also the Trinit`a dei Peregrini of St. Philip).
Scandals effected by this form of devotion are too obvious and
were too often denounced by the saints and other writers from
St. Jerome to Thomas a Kempis to need any setting out here. The
"Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer are sufficient evidence. But the
characteristic ones: (i) excessive credulity of the guardian of
the shrine; (ii) insistence upon the obligation of pilgrimages
as though they were necessary for salvation; (iii) the neglect
on the part of too many of the pilgrims of their own duties at
home in order to spend more time in passing from one sanctuary
to another; (iv) the wantonness and evil-living and
evil-speaking indulged in by the pilgrims themselves in many
cases. Not as though these abuses invalidated the use of
pilgrimages. Erasmus himself declares that they did not; but
they certainly should have been more stringently and rigorously
repressed by the church rulers. The dangers of these scandals
are evidently reduced to a minimum by the speed of modern
travel; yet from time to time warnings need to be repeated lest
the old evils should return.
BLESSING
To complete this article, it will be well to give the following
blessings taken from the Sarum Missal (London, 1868, 595-6).
These should be compared with Mohammedan formularies
(Champagnac, II, 1077-80, etc.):-
Blessing of Scrip and Staff
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ who of Thy unspeakable mercy at
the bidding of the Father and by the Co-operation of the Holy
Ghost wast willing to come down from Heaven and to seek the
sheep that was lost by the deceit of the devil, and to carry him
back on Thy shoulders to the flock of the Heavenly Country; and
didst commend the sons of Holy Mother Church by prayer to ask,
by holy living to seek, by persevering to knock that so they may
the more speedily find the reward of saving life; we humbly call
upon Thee that Thou wouldst be pleased to bless these scrips (or
this scrip) and these staves (or this staff) that whosoever for
the love of Thy name shall desire to wear the same at his side
or hang it at his neck or to bear it in his hands and so on his
pilgrimage to seek the aid of the Saints with the accompaniment
of humble prayer, being protected by the guardianship of Thy
Right Hand may be found meet to attain unto the joys of the
everlasting vision through Thee, O Saviour of the World, Who
livest and reignest in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for
ever and ever. Amen.
Here let the scrip be sprinkled with Holy Water and let the
Priest put it round each pilgrim's neck, saying: In the Name of
our Lord Jesus Christ receive this scrip, the habit of thy
pilgrimage, that after due chastisement thou mayest be found
worthy to reach in safety the Shrine of the Saints to which thou
desirest to go; and after the accomplishment of thy journey thou
mayest return to us in health. Through, etc.
Here let him give the Staff to the Pilgrim, saying: Receive this
staff for thy support in the travail and toil of thy pilgrimage,
that thou mayest be able to overcome all the hosts of the enemy
and reach in safety the Shrine of the Saints whither thou
desirest to go; and having obediently fulfilled thy course
mayest return again to us with joy. Through, etc.
The Blessing of the Cross for one on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
Let us pray. O God, whose power is invincible and pity cannot be
measured, the aid and sole comfort of pilgrims; who givest unto
Thy servants armour which cannot be overcome; we beseech Thee to
be pleased to bless this dress which is humbly devoted to Thee,
that the banner of the venerated Cross, the figure whereof is
upon it, may be a most mighty strength to Thy servants against
the wicked temptations of the old enemy; a defence by the way, a
protection in Thy house, and a security to us on every side.
Through, etc.
Here let the garment marked with the Cross be sprinkled with
Holy Water and given to the pilgrim, the priest saying:
Receive this dress whereupon the sign of the Cross of the
Lord Our Saviour is traced, that through it safety, benediction
and strength to journey in prosperity, may accompany thee to the
Sepulchre of Him, who with God the Father and the Holy Ghost,
liveth and reigneth one God, world without end. Amen.
Marx, Das Wallfahren in der katholischen Kirche (Trier,
1842); Sivry and Champagnac, Dictionn. des pelerinages (Paris,
1859); Rock, The Church of Our Fathers (London, 1852); Le Roy,
Hist. des peler. de la sainte Vierge en France (Paris, 1875);
Waterton, Pietas Mariana Britannica (London, 1879); Chambers,
Book of Days (London, s. d.); Jusserand, tr. Smith, English
Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (London, 1892); Itineraires
franc,ais XI ^e-XIII ^e siecles, ed. Michelant and Raynaud
(1882-); Palestine Pilgrim Text Society (London, 1884-);
Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lands (Innsbruck, 1900);
Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography (London, 1897-1906); Wall,
Shrines of British Saints (London, 1905); BrEhier, L'eglise et
l'Orient au moyen-age (Paris, 1907); Camm, Forgotten Shrines
(London, 1910); Revue de l'Orient latin (Paris, 1883-);
Messenger of the Sacred Heart (New York, 1892-9), passim.
BEDE JARRETT
Piligrim
Piligrim
Bishop of Passau, date of birth unknown; died 20 May, 991. He
was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Niederaltaich, and
was made bishop in 971. To him are attributed some, if not all,
of the ""Forgeries of Lorch", a series of documents, especially
Bulls of Popes Symmachus, Eugene II, Leo VII, and Agapetus II,
fabricated to prove that Passau was a continuation of a former
archdiocese named Lorch. By these he attempted to obtain from
Benedict VI the elevation of Passau to an archdiocese, the
re-erection of those dioceses in Pannonia and Moesia which had
been suffragans of Lorch, and the pallium for himself. While
Piligrim was ambitious, he also had at heart the welfare of the
captive Christians in Hungary and the Christianization of that
country. There is extant an alleged Bull of Benedict VI granting
Piligrim's demands; but this is also the work of Piligrim,
possibly a document drawn up for the papal signature, which it
never received. Apart from these forgeries, common enough at the
time, Piligrim was a good and zealous bishop, and converted
numerous heathens in Hungary, built many schools and churches,
restored the Rule of St. Benedict in Niederaltaich, transferred
the relics of St. Maximilian from Oetting to Passau, and held
synods (983-91) at Ennsburg (Lorch), Mautern, and Mistelbach. In
the "Niebelungenlied" he is lauded as a contemporary of the
heroes of that epic.
DUeMMLER, Piligrim von Passau und das Erzbisthum Lorch (Leipzig,
1854); IDEM in Berliner Sitzungsberichte (1898), 758-75; UHLIRZ,
Die Urkundenfaelschung zu Passau im zehnten Jahrhundert in
Mittheilungen des Instituts fuer oesterreichische
Geschichtsforschung, III (Vienna, 1882), 177-228; IDEM, ibid.,
supplementary vol., II (1888), 548 sq.; HEUWIESER, Sind die
Bischoefe von Passau Nachfolger der Bischoefe von Lorch? in
Theologisch-praktische Monats-Schrift, XXI (Passau, 1910),
13-23, 85-90; MITTERMUeLLER, War Bischof Piligrim von Passau ein
Urkundenfaelscher? in Der Katholik, XLVII (Mainz, 1867), 337-62.
MICHAEL OTT.
Pillar of Cloud (Pillar of Fire)
Pillar of Cloud
(Pillar of Fire).
A cloud which accompanied the Israelites during their wandering.
It was the same as the pillar of fire, as it was luminous at
night (cf. Ex., xiv, 19, 20, 24; Num., ix, 21, 22). The name
"pillar" is due to the columnar form which it commonly assumed.
It first appeared while the Israelites were marching from
Succoth to Etham, and vanished when they reached the borders of
Chanaan (Ex., xiii, 20-22; xl, 36). It was a manifestation of
God's presence among His people (Ex., xiv, 24 sqq.; xxxiii, 9;
Num., xi, 25; xii, 5; Deut., xxxi, 15; Ps. xcviii, 7). During
encampment it rested over the tabernacle of the covenant, after
it was built, and before that time probably over the centre of
the camp. It rose as a signal that camp was to be broken, and
during the march it preceded the people, stopping when they were
to pitch their tents (Ex., xl, 34, 35; Num., ix, 17 sqq.; Deut.,
i, 33). At the crossing of the Red Sea it rested between the
Israelites and the Egyptians, being bright on the side of the
former and dark on the other (Ex., xiv, 19, 20). During the
marches it lit the way at night, and by day protected the people
from the heat of the sun (Num., x, 34; Deut., i, 33; II Esd.,
ix, 12; Wis., x, 17; xviii, 3; Ps. civ, 39). It may be doubted
whether it covered the camp by day, as many commentators
maintain. Num., x, 34, speaks only of the march, and Wis., xix,
7, does not necessarily refer to the whole camp.
St. Paul (I Cor., x, 1, 2, 6) considers it as a type of baptism,
and the Fathers regard it as the figure of the Holy Ghost
leading the faithful to the true Promised Land. The
rationalistic explanation which sees in the pillar only a torch
carried on a pole, such as is used even now by caravans in
Arabia, fails to take the data of the Bible into consideration.
Palis, in Vigouroux, Dict. de la Bib., s. v. Colonne de Nuee;
and commentaries on the texts cited.
F. BECHTEL
Pima Indians
Pima Indians
An important tribe of Southern Arizona, centering along the
middle Gila and its affluent, the Salt River. Linguistically
they belong to the Piman branch of the widely extended
Shoshonean stock, and their language, with dialectic variation,
is the same as that spoken also by the Papago and extinct
Sobaipuri of southern Arizona, and by the Navome of Sonora,
Mexico. In Spanish times the tribes of the Arizona group were
known collectively as Pimas Altos (Upper Pima), while those of
Senora were distinguished as Pimas Bajos (Lower Pima), the whole
territory being known as the Pimeria. The tribal name Pima is a
corruption of their own word for "no", mistaken by the early
missionaries for a proper name. They call themselves simply
'A`atam, "people", or sometimes for distinction 'A`atam-akimult,
"river people". Notwithstanding their importance as a tribe, the
Pima have not been prominent in history, owing to their
remoteness from military and missionary activity during the
Spanish period, and to their almost unbroken peaceable attitude
towards the whites. It was at one time claimed that they were
the authors of the ruined pueblos in their country, notably the
celebrated Casa Grande, but later investigation confirms the
statement recorded by Father Garces as early as 1780 that they
were built by a previous people connected with the Hopi.
The real history of the Pima may be said to begin with the
German Jesuit missionary explorer, Father Eusebio Keno (Kuehn),
who in 1687 established a missionary headquarters at Dolores,
near the present Cucurpe, northern Senora, Mexico, from which
point until his death in 1711 he covered the whole Pimeria in
his missionary labours. In 1694, led by Indian reports of
massive ruins in the far north, he penetrated along along the
Gila, and said Mass in the Casa Grande. In 1697 he accompanied a
military exploration of the Pima country, under Lieutenant
Bernal, and Captain Mange, baptizing nearly a hundred Indians.
In 1701 he made the earliest map of the Gila region. He found
the Pima and their cousins the Papago most anxious for teachers.
"They were,. above all, desirous of being formed into regular
mission communities, with resident padres of their own; and at
many rancherias they built rude but neatly cared-for churches,
planted fields, and tended herds of livestock in patient waiting
for the missionaries, who, in most cases, never came "
(Bancroft). From 1736 to 1750 Fathers Keller and Sedelmair
several times visited the Pima, but no missions were established
in their country, although a number of the tribe attached
themselves to the Papago missions. The revolt of the southern
tribes in 1750 caused a suspension of the work, but the missions
were resumed some years later and continued under increasing
difficulties until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, at
which time the whole number of neophytes in Arizona, chiefly
Papago, was about 1200. In the next year the Arizona missions
were turned over to Franciscans of the College of Queretaro, who
continued the work with some success in spite of constant
inroads of the Apache. Although details are wanting, it is
probable that the number of neophytes increased. The most noted
of these latter workers was Father Francisco Garces, in charge
of the Papago at San Xavier del Bac (1768-76). In 1828, by
decree of the revolutionary government of Mexico, all the
missions were confiscated, the Spanish priests expelled, and all
Christianizing effort came to an end.
About 1840 the Pima were strengthened by the Maricopa from the
lower Gila, who moved up to escape the attacks of the Yuma, the
common enemy of both. Both tribes continue to live in close
alliance, although of entirely different language and origin.
Their relations with the United States Government began in 1846,
when General Kearney's expedition entered their territory, and
met with a friendly reception. Other expeditions stopped at
their villages within the next few years, all meeting with kind
treatment. With the influx of the California gold hunters about
1850, there set in a long period of demoralization, with
frequent outrages by the whites which several times almost
provoked an outbreak. In 1850 and 1857 the hostile Yuma were
defeated. The Apache raids were constant and destructive until
the final subjugation of that tribe by the Government. In all
the Apache campaigns since 1864 the Pima have served as willing
and efficient scouts. In 1857 a non-resident agent was
appointed, and in 1859 a reservation was surveyed for the two
tribes, and $10,000 in goods distributed among them as a
recognition of past services. In 1870 the agency was established
at Sacaton on the reservation, since which time they have been
regularly under government supervision. The important problem of
irrigation, upon which the future prosperity of the tribes
depends, is now in process of satisfactory solution by the
Government. As a body the Indians are now civilized, industrious
as farmers and labourers, and largely Christian, divided between
Presbyterian and Catholic. Presbyterian work was begun in 1870.
The Catholics re-entered the field shortly afterwards, and have
now a flourishing mission school, St. John the Baptist, at Gila
Crossing, built in 1899, in charge of Franciscan Fathers, with
several small chapels, and total Catholic population of 600 in
the two tribes, including fifty Maricopa. The 5000 or more
Papago attached to the same agency have been practically all
Catholic from the Jesuit period.
In their primitive condition the Pima were agricultural and
sedentary, living in villages of lightly-built dome-shaped
houses, occupied usually by a single family each, and
cultivating by the help of irrigation large crops of corn,
beans, pumpkins and native cotton, from which the women spun the
simple clothing, consisting of a breech-cloth and head-band for
the man, and a short skirt for the women, with sandals or
moccasin for special occasion and a buckskin shirt in extreme
cold weather. They also prepared clothing fabrics from the inner
bark of the willow. The heavier labour of cultivation was
assumed by the men. Besides their cultivated foods, they made
use of the fruits of the saguaro cactus, from which they
prepared the intoxicating tizwin, and mesquite bean, besides the
ordinary game of the country. They painted and tattooed their
faces and wore their hair at full length. Their women were not
good potters, but they excelled as basket makers. Their arms
were the bow, the club, and the shield, fighting always on foot.
Their allies were the Papago and Maricopa, their enemies the
Apache and Yuma. The killing of an enemy was followed by an
elaborate purification ceremony, closing with a victory dance.
There was a head tribunal chief, with subordinate village
chiefs. Polygamy was allowed, but not frequent. Descent was in
the male line. Unlike Indians generally, they had large families
and welcomed twins. And unlike their neighbours, they buried in
the ground instead of cremating their dead. Deformed infants
were killed at birth, as were at later times the infants born of
white or Mexican fathers. They had, and still retain, many songs
of ceremony, war, hunting, gaming, love, medicine, and of
childhood.
According to their elaborate genesis myth, the earth was formed
by "Earth Doctor", who himself evolved from a dense cloud of
darkness. He made the plants and animals, and a race of
never-dying humans, who by their increase so crowded the earth
that he destroyed his whole creation and made a new world with a
new race subject to thinning out by death. Another hero god is
"Elder Brother", and prominent place is assigned to Sun, Moon,
Night, and Coyote. The myth also includes a deluge story.
Although the linguistic relations of the Oima are well known,
all that is recorded in the language is comprised chiefly in a
few vocabularies, none exceeding two hundred words, several of
which in manuscript are in the keeping of the Bureau of American
Ethnology (See KINO; PAPAGO INDIANS.)
BANCROFT, Hist. Arizona and New Mexico (San Francisco, 1889);
Idem, Hist. Mexican States and Texas (2 vols., San Francisco,
1886); BARTLETT, Personal Narrative XX of Boundary Commission (2
vols., New York, 1854); BROWN, Adventures in the Apache Country
(New York, 1869); Catholic Indian Missions, Bureau of, annual
reports of Director of (Washington); Diary and Itinerary of
Francisco Garces, ed. CONES (2 vols., New York, 1900);
Documentos para Historia de Mexico (20 vols., Mexico, 1853-57);
includes BERNAL, Relacion de la Pimeria, MANGE, Hist. Pimeria,
etc; EMERY, Notes of a Military Reconnaissance (Washington,
1848); RUSSELL, The Pima Indians in Twenty-sixth Rept. Bur. Am.
Ethnology (Washington, 1908); WHIPPLE, Rept. of Expedition from
San Diego to the Colorado (one of official Pacific Railroad
Repts., Ex. Doc. 19, 31st Cong., 2nd sess., Washington, 1891).
JAMES MOONEY
Pinara
Pinara
A titular see in Lycia, suffragan of Myra. Pinara was one of the
chief cities of the Lycian confederation. The Lycian hero,
Pandarus, was held there in great honour. It was supposed to
have been founded by Pinarus, who embarked with the first
Cretans. According to another tradition, it was a colony of
Kanthus and was first called Artymnessus. As in Lycian Pinara
signifies "round hill", the city being built on a hill of this
nature would have derived its new name from this fact. It is now
the village of Minara or Minareh in the vilayet of Koniah. It
contains magnificent ruins: walls, a theatre, an acropolis,
sarcophagi and tombs, rare inscriptions (often Lycian), and the
remains of a church. Five bishops of Pinara are known:
Eustathius, who signed the formula of Acacius of Caesarea at the
Council of Selencia in 359; Heliodorus, who signed the letter
from the bishops of Lycia to the Emperor Leo (458); Zenas,
present at the Trullan Council (692); Theodore, at the Council
of Nicaea (787); Athanasius, at the Photian Council of
Constantinople (879).
LE QUIEN, Oriens christ., I, 975; SMITH, Dict, of Greek and
Roman geog., s. v.; FELLOWS, Lycia, 139; SPRATT AND FORBES,
Travels in Lycia, I, 1 sqq.
S. PETRIDES.
Pinar Del Rio, Diocese of
Diocese of Pinar del Rio
(Pinetensis ad Flumen)
Located in Cuba, erected by the Brief "Actum praeclare" of Leo
XIII, 20 Feb., 1903. The boundaries of the diocese are those of
the civil province; it occupies the western part of the island
and has an area of 2867 square miles. Its first bishop was
Braulio de Orne y Vivanco, consecrated at Havana, 28 October,
1903, died the following year. The present bishop is Manuel Ruiz
y Rodriguez, consecrated at Cienfuegos, 11 June, 1907. The
diocese contains 27 parishes with 19 secular priests. There is a
boys' school conducted by the Piarist Fathers, and a girls'
school under the care of religious women.
FERMIN FRAGA BARRO.
Ippolito Pindemonte
Ippolito Pindemonte
An Italian poet of noble birth, born at Verona, 13 Nov., 1753;
died there, 18 Nov., 1828. He received his training at the
Collegio di San Carlo in Modena. As a result of much travelling
in Italy and foreign lands he acquired a wide acquaintance, and
formed close relations with many men of letters, He witnessed
the beginnings of the Revolution in Paris, and poetized
thereupon in his "Francia". Thence he went to London, Berlin,
and Vienna. In 1791 he returned to Verona, with health impaired
and saddened at the failure of his hopes for the regeneration
and aggrandizement of Italy, and devoted his last years to study
and religious practices. The chief poetical works of Pindemonte
are the "Poesie" and "Prose campestri", the "Sepolcri" and his
version of the Odyssey. The "Poesie" and "Prose campestri" were
published between 1788 and 1794; the most admired portions are
those entitled "Alla Luna", "Alla Salute", "La Melanconia", and
"La Giovinezza". They evince his reading of the English
descriptive poets. The "Sepolcri" is in the form of a letter and
is largely a response to the similarly named poem of Foscolo,
with whose views, respecting the patriotic and other emotions
evoked by the aspect of the tombs of the well-deserving, he
sympathizes; he rebukes Foscolo, however, for having neglected
to recount, among the other emotions, that of the comfort
brought to us by religious considerations. The influence of the
English poet Gray is noticeable in this work. Upon his version
of the Odyssey he seems to have laboured fifteen years, and is
quite faithful to the letter and spirit of the original. It
appeared in print in 1822. His lesser works include among others
several tragedies, the "Ulisse", the "Geta e Caracalla" the
"Eteocle e Polinice", and especially the "Arminio", composed in
1804 and revealing the influence exerted upon him by the
Ossianic matter. In prose he produced the "Clementina", and a
short story, "Abaritte", which imitates Johnson's "Rasselas". He
left a large correspondence exchanged with noted persons of his
time and a few minor documents.
Poesie originali di I. Pindemonte (Florence, 1858-9); Odissea,
ed. LONZOGUS, SANSONI; TORRACA, I. Sepolcri di I. Pindemonte in
Discussioni (Leghorn, 1888); MONTANARI, Storia della vita de
opere di I. P. (Venice, 1855); ZANELLA, I. Pindemonte e gli
Inglesi in Paralleli letterari (Verona, 1885).
J. D. M. FORD.
John de Pineda
John de Pineda
Born in Seville, 1558; died there, 27 Jan., 1637. He entered the
Society of Jesus in 1572, taught philosophy and theology five
years in Seville and Cordova, and specialized in Scripture,
which he taught for eighteen years in Cordova, Seville, and
Madrid. He held the posts of Provost of the professed house and
rector of the college of Seville. He was consultor to the
Spanish Inquisition, and, in this capacity, visited the chief
libraries of Spain. The results of his visits was the "Index
Prohibitorum Librorum" (1612), which won the appreciation of the
Inquisition and of the chief inquisitor, Cardinal Sandoval,
Archbishop of Toledo; it was re-edited (1632) for Cardinal
Zapata. His learning is evidenced by the nineteen printed works
and six manuscripts, chiefly of exegetical subjects, which
remain to us of his writings: (1) "Commentariorum in Job libri
tredecim" (Madrid, 1597-1601). Each chapter is paraphrased and
fully commented upon. These two folios were often re-issued in
Madrid, Cologne, Seville, Venice, and Paris. Seven indices
served as guides to the student. Both Catholic and Protestant
exegetes still praise this colossal storehouse of erudition. The
archeology, textual criticism, comparison of various
interpretations, use of historical data from profane writers,
all show Pineda to have been far ahead of his time in scientific
criticism of the Bible; (2) "Praelectio sacra in Cantico
Canticorum" (Seville, 1602), issued as a greeting to Cardinal de
Guevara, archbishop of Seville, on the occasion of his visit to
the Jesuit college there; (3) "Salomon praevius, sive de rebus
Salomonis regis libri octo" (fol, pp. 587; Lyons 1609; Mainz,
1613). The life, kingdom, wisdom, wealth, royal buildings,
character, and death of Solomon are treated in a scholarly
fashion; five indices are added as helps to the student. (4) De
C. Plinii loco inter eruditos controverso ex lib. VII. Atque
etiam morbus est aliquis per sapientiam mori". Considerable
controversy resulted from his interpretation of Pliny (see
Sommervogel, infra). (5). "Commentarii in Ecclesiasten, liber
unus" (folio, pp. 1224; Seville, 1619), appeared in various
editions, as did the commentary on Solomon. The fame he won by
his erudition and sanctity is attested in many ways. On a visit
to the University of Evora, he was greeted by a Latin speech,
and a memorial tablet was set up with the legend, Hic Pineda
fuit. What astounds one most in the writings of this exegete of
the old school is his vast knowledge, not merely of Latin, but
of Greek and Hebrew.
NIEREMBERG, Varones Ilustres de la C. de J. VII (Bilbao, 1891),
195; SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliotheque de la C. de J., (Paris, 1895),
VI, 796; IX, 772; GILHERME, Menologe de la C. de J. Assistance
d'Espagne, I (Paris, 1902, 172.
WALTER DRUM
Diocese of Pinerolo
Diocese of Pinerolo
(PINEROLIENSIS)
Located in the province of Turin, in Piedmont, Northern Italy,
suffragan of Turin. In the Middle Ages the city of Pinerolo was
one of the keys of Italy, and was therefore one of the principal
fortresses of the dukes of Savoy. It is now the seat of a
military school. Those of its churches deserving mention are the
cathedral (which dates from the ninth century, and has a
beautiful campanile) and San Maurizio, a beautiful Gothic
church, from the belfry of which there is a superb view of the
Alps and of the sub-Alpine plain. The earliest mention of
Pinerolo is in the tenth century; it belonged to the Marca di
Torino (March of Turin) and was governed by the abbots of
Pinerolo, even after the city had established itself as a
commune (1200). From 1235, however, Amadeus IV of Savoy
exercised over the town a kind of protectorate which, in 1243,
became absolute, and was exercised thereafter either by the
house of Savoy, or of Savoy-Acaia. When the French invaded
Piedmont (1536), Pinerolo fell into their hands and they
remained in possession until 1574. However, by the treaty of
Cherasco it again fell to France (1630), and it remained under
French rule until restored by the treaty of Turin to Savoy. The
latter state, at the same time, withdrew from the league against
Louis XIV. Pinerolo was originally an abbey nullius. It was
founded in 1064 by Adelaide, Princess of Susa, and was made a
diocese, in 1748, at the request of Charles Emmanuel, its first
prelate being G. B. d'Orlie. In 1805, conformably with the wish
of Napoleon, the diocese was united with that of Saluzzo, but,
in 1817, was re-established as an independent see. Within its
territory is the famous fortress of Fenestrelle. It has 58
parishes, 16,200 inhabitants, 3 religious houses of women, and 3
educational institutes for girls.
CAPPELLETTI, Le Chiese d'Italia (Venice, 1857); CARUTTI, Storia
di Pinerolo (Pinerolo, 1893).
U. BENIGNI.
Alexandre Guy Pingre
Alexandre Guy Pingre
Born in Paris 11 September, 1711; died 1 May, 1796. He was
educated in Senlis at the college of the Genovefan fathers,
Regulars of the Order of St. Augustine, which he entered at
sixteen. In 1735 he was made professor of theology there. About
1749 he accepted the professorship of astronomy in the
newly-founded academy at Rouen. Already famous for detecting an
error of four minutes in Lacaille's calculation of the lunar
eclipse of 23 December, 1749, in 1753 he further distinguished
himself by the observation of the transit of Mercury and was
consequently appointed corresponding member of the Academie des
Sciences. Later he was made librarian of Ste-Genevieve and
chancellor of the university. He built an observatory in the
Abbey of Ste-Genevieve and there spent forty years of strenuous
labour. He compiled in 1753 the first nautical almanac for the
year 1754, and subsequently for 1755-57, when Lalande was
charged with the publication. Lacaille had calculated for his
treatise, "L'art de verifier les dates", the eclipses of the
first nineteen centuries of the Christian era; Pingre in a
second edition took up his calculations and extended them over
ten centuries before Christ. In 1760 he joined an unsuccessful
expedition to the Island Rodriguez in the Pacific to observe the
transit of Venus on 6 June, 1761. More satisfactory results were
obtained from an expedition to the French Cape on Haiti where
the next transit was observed on 3 June, 1769. About 1757 he
became engrossed in the history of comets, and in his
"Cometographie ou Traite historique et theorique des cometes" (2
vols., Paris, 1783-4), the material contained in all the ancient
annals and more recent publications is methodically arranged and
critically sifted. In 1756 he published a "Projet d'une histoire
d'astronomie du dix-septieme siecle", completed in 1786. Through
Lalande's influence the National Assembly granted three thousand
francs to defray the expenses of publication, but it proceeded
slowly and at Pinge's death was discontinued. In 1901 the whole
work was re-edited by Bigourdan under the title: "Annales
celestes du dix-septieme siecle". Pingre also published "Manuale
Astronomicon libri quinque et Arati Phaenomena, cum
interpretatione Gallica et notis" (2 vols., 1786), and numerous
astronomical observations in the "Memoires de l'Institut"
(1753-87), in the "Journal de Trevoux", in the "Phil. Trans."
etc.
In encyclopedic works it is commonly asserted that Pingre took
an active part in Jansenistic quarrels, and hence was relegated
to provincial towns and colleges. Consequently he is often said
to have fallen a victim to Roman intolerance. The fact is that
during his earlier career Pingre seems to have been imbued with
Jansenistic views, as is borne out by the "Nouvelles
Ecclesiastiques", the great Jansenist organ. In 1737 Mgr de
Salignac, Bishop of Pamiers, active against Jansenism, summoned
Pingre, who was severely rebuked and finally had to submit to an
examen by some Jesuit fathers. He expressed himself willing to
condemn the five propositions, de caeur et d'esprit, at the same
time maintaining that he could not condemn them as propositions
of Jansenius, as they were not to be found in his works. (It
should be remembered that in 1653 and 1656 the popes had
declared repeatedly that the propositions were de facto
contained in the "Augustinus".) In 1745 a general chapter of the
fathers of Ste-Genevieve was convened; by order of the king
Father Chambroy was elected superior general. Strict orders had
been issued to the superiors of the conventual establishments
that only such members should be deputed as were willing to
subscribe to the papal Bulls and especially "Unigenitus". This
measure excited opposition. Father Pingre, then living at
Senlis, and some of his fellow religious entered a vehement
protest against the proceedings of the chapter. Father Scoffier,
one of the most determined opponents of the election, was
removed from Senlis. A similar disciplinary punishment was
inflicted on Pingre, then professor of theology. According to an
introductory notice prefaced to the memoirs of the Jansenist
Abbe Arnauld d'Andilly, in the collection "Memoires sur
l'histoire de France de Michaud et Poujoulat" (2nd series, IX),
Pingre is their editor (Leyden, 1756). He was therefore an
active Jansenist, at least until 1747; his influence, however,
never became serious nor lasting. In the ecclesiastical history
of the eighteenth century, especially in the "Memoires pour
servir `a l'histoire ecclesiatique pendant le 18e siecle" of
Picot, his name is not mentioned.
PRONY, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages d'Alexandre Gui Pingre
in Memoires de l'Institut, I; LALANDE, Hist. de l'Astronomie
1796, pp. 773-8; DELAMBRE, Hist. de l'Astronomie au XVIIIe.
siecle, pp. 664-87; VENTENAT, Notice sur la vie du citoyen
Pingre, lue `a la seance publique du Lycee des Arts in Magasin
Encyclopedique, I, 342; Table raisonnee et alphabetique des
nouvelles Ecclesiastiques depuis 1728 jusqu'en 1760
inclusivement (1767), s. vv. Pingre; Salignac; Chanoines
Reguliers de Ste-Genevieve.
J. STEIN
Pinna Da Encarnacao, Mattheus
Mattheus Pinna da Encarnac,ao
A writer and theologian, born at Rio de Janeiro, 23 Aug., 1687;
died there, 18 Dec., 1764. On 3 March, 1703, he became a
Benedictine at the Abbey of Nossa Senhora do Montserrate at Rio
de Janeiro, where he also studied the humanities and philosophy
under the learned Jose da Natividade. After studying theology at
the monastery of Bahia he was ordained priest 24 March, 1708,
and appointed professor of philosophy and theology. Along with
Gaspar da Madre de Deus (died about 1780), Antonio de Sao
Bernardo (died 1774) and a few others, he was the most learned
Benedictine of his province and his contemporaries considered
him the greatest theologian in Brazil. He was likewise highly
esteemed for his piety and charity towards the poor, the sick,
and the neglected. In 1726 he was elected abbot of the monastery
at Rio de Janeiro, but Soon after his election incurred the
displeasure of Luiz Vahia Monteiro, the Governor of Brazil, who
banished him from his monastery in 1727. Soon afterwards he
escaped to Portugal, became very influential at Court and was
restored to his monastery by Cardinal Motta in 1729. He held the
office of abbot repeatedly thereafter; both at Rio de Janeiro
(1729-31 and 1739) and at Bahia in 1746. In 1732 he was elected
provincial abbot, in which capacity he visited even the most
distant monasteries of Brazil, despite the great difficulty of
travel. He was again elected provincial abbot in 1752, but this
time he declined the honour, preferring to spend his old age in
prayer and retirement. His works are: "Defensio S. Matris
Ecclesiae" (Lisbon, 1729), an extensive treatise on grace and
free will against Quesnel, Baius, Jansenius, etc.; "Viridario
Evangelico" (Lisbon, 1730-37), four volumes of sermons on the
Gospels; "Theologia Scholastica Dogmatica", in six volumes,
which he did not complete entirely nor was it published.
Dietario do Mosteiro de N. S. do Montserrate do Rio de Janeiro,
preserved in Manuscript at the Monastery Library of Rio de
Janeiro, 69-74, 312-18; RAMIZ GALVAO, Apontamentos historicos
sobre a Ordem Benedictino em general, e em particular sobre o
Mosteiro de N. S. do Monserrate do Rio de Janeiro in Revista
Trimensal do Instituto historico, geographico e ethnographico do
Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1872), 249 sq.
MICHAEL OTT.
Pinto, Fernao Mendes
Fernao Mendes Pinto
A Portuguese traveller, born at Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra,
c. 1509; died at Almada near Lisbon, 8 July, 1583. After serving
as page to the Duke of Coimbra, he went to the East Indies in
1537, and, for twenty-one years, travelled, chiefly in the Far
East. In the course of his adventurous career at sea, he was, as
he tells on the title page of his book, several times
shipwrecked, taken prisoner many times and sold as a slave. He
was the first to make known the natural riches of Japan, and
founded the first settlement near Yokohama, in 1548. In 1558,
tired of wandering, he returned to Portugal where he married,
settling in the town of Almada. The first account of his travels
is to be found in a collection of Jesuit letters published in
Venice in 1565, but the best is his own "Peregrinac,aeo", the
first edition of which appeared in Lisbon in 1614. The work is
regarded as a classic in Portugal, where Pinto is considered one
of their best prose writers. In other countries, it has been
enthusiastically read by some, by others characterized as a
highly coloured romance. But it has an element of sincerity
which is convincing, and its substantial honesty is now
generally admitted. It is probable that, having written it from
memory, he put down his impressions, rather than events as they
actually occurred. The Spanish edition by Francisco de Herrara
appeared in 1620, reprinted in 1627, 1645, 1664. The French
translation is by Figuier (Paris, 1628, and 1630). There are
three English editions by Cogan (London, 1663, 1692, and 1891),
the last abridged and illustrated.
COGAN, Travels of Fernando Mendes Pinto, tr. (London, 1891).
V. FUENTES.
Pinturicchio
Pinturicchio
(BERNARDINO DI BETTO, surnamed PINTURICCHIO)
Born at Verona, about 1454; died at Siena, 11 December, 1513. He
studied under Fiorenzo di Lorenzo; and his fellow students,
perhaps because of his great facility, surnamed him Pinturicchio
(the dauber). Pinturicchio did an immense amount of work. His
principal easel pictures are : "St. Catherine" (National
Gallery, London); a "Madonna" (Cathedral of Sanseverino), with
the prothonotary, Liberato Bartello, kneeling; "Portrait of a
Child" (Dresden Gallery); "Apollo and Marsyas" (the Louvre),
attributed to Perugino, Francia, and even Raphael; the "Madonna
enthroned between saints", an altar-piece (Pinacotheca of
Perugia); the "Madonna of Monteoliveto" (communal palace of San
Gimignano); a "Coronation of the Virgin" (Pinacotheca of the
Vatican); the "Return of Ulysses" (National Gallery, London);
the "Ascent of Calvary", a splendid miniature (Borromeo Palace,
Milan). He was Chiefly a frescoist, following principally the
process of distemper (tempera). There are frescoes of his in the
Sistine Chapel, in the decoration of which he assisted Perugino
in 1480, Ara Coeli, the Appartamento Borgia, Spello, Siena, and
Sta Maria del Popolo. Modern critics agree in recognizing as his
two frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, the "Baptism of Jesus" and
"Moses journeying to Egypt". The Bufalini commissioned him to
paint the life of St. Bernardine for the chapel at the Ara
Coeli; but his chief work was the decoration of the Borgia
apartment entrusted to him by Alexander VI. In the Hall of
Saints, the most beautiful of all, he has outlined with much
grace and brilliancy the histories of various martyrs: St.
Susanna, St. Barbara, Disputation of St. Catherine, Visit of St.
Anthony to St. Paul the Hermit, and the Martyrdom of St.
Sebastian. The next hall is devoted to the representation of the
Liberal Arts. Critics generally deny that the decoration of the
last two rooms is the work of Pinturicchio, but the three large
rooms which he certainly decorated form an exquisite museum.
Following the Sienese school Pinturicchio enlivened his
paintings by making use of sculptured reliefs glistening with
gold which he mixed with his frescoes. In 1501 he decorated the
chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Mary Major at Spello. On
the ceiling he painted four Sibyls and on the walls the
Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Arrival of
the Magi, and Jesus in the midst of the Doctors. He had a
special love for these pictures for in them he placed his own
portrait. In 1502 Cardinal Francisco Piccolomini commissioned
him to depict the life of his uncle, Pius II, in ten large
compositions on the side walls of the Piccolomini library at
Siena. These frescoes are fifteenth-century tableaux vivants in
which people of all conditions are represented. Above the altar
erected at the entrance to the Library is seen the Coronation of
Pius III. Pinturicchio, again summoned to Rome by Julius II,
painted on the ceiling of the choir of Sta Maria del Popolo
splendid Sibyls and Doctors of the Church, in stucco frames
separated by graceful arabesques.
CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE, A new history of painting in Italy, III,
(London, 1866), 256; BURCKHARDT AND BODE, Le Cicerone, tr.
GERARD, II (Paris, 1892), 588-91; EHRLE AND STEVENSON, Gli
affreschi del Pinturicchio nell'appartamento Borgia (Rome,
1897); STEIMANN, Pinturicchio (Bielefeld, 1898); BOYER D'AGEN,
Pinturicchio in Siena (Berlin, 1903); RICCI, Pinturicchio, tr.
into French (Paris, 1903); SORTAIS, Pinturicchio et l'Ecole
ombrienne in Excursions artistiques et litteraires (Paris,
1903); 2nd series, 1-89; GOFFIN, Pinturicchio (Paris, 1906);
PERATE, Pinturicchio in Hist. de l'Art d'Andre Michel, IV,
(Paris, 1909), 317-29.
GASTON SORTAIS
Martin Alonso Pinzon
Martin Alonso Pinzon
Spanish navigator and companion of Columbus on his first voyage
to the New World, b. at Palos de Moguer, 1441; d. there at the
convent of La Rabida, 1493. Sprung from a family of seamen, he
became a hardy sailor and skilful pilot. According to Parkman
and other historians, he sailed under Cousin, a navigator from
Dieppe, to the eastern coast of Africa, whence they were carried
far to the south-west. They there discovered an unknown land and
a mighty river. Pinzon's conduct on this voyage was so mutinous
that Cousin entered a complaint to the admiralty on their return
home, and had him dismissed from the maritime service of Dieppe.
Returning to Spain Pinzon became acquainted with Columbus
through Fray Juan Perez de Marchina, prior of the convent of La
Rabida, and became an enthusiastic promoter of the scheme of the
great navigator. Other historians account differently for the
origin of Pinzon's interest in Columbus's project. According to
these, he heard of the scheme several years after he had retired
from active life as a sailor, and established with his brothers
a shipbuilding firm in his native town. During a visit to Rome
he learned from the Holy Office of the tithes which had been
paid from the beginning of the fifteenth century from a country
named Vinland, and examined the charts of the Norman explorers.
On his return home he supported the claims of Columbus, when his
opinion was sought by Queen Isabella's advisers concerning the
proposed voyage. It was he who paid the one-eighth of the
expense demanded from Columbus as his share, and built the three
vessels for the voyage. Through his influence also Columbus
secured the crews for the transatlantic journey. Pinzon
commanded the "Pinta", and his brother Vicente Yanez the "Nina".
On 21 November, 1492, he deserted Columbus off Cuba, hoping to
be the first to discover the imaginary island of Osabeque. He
was the first to discover Haiti (Hispaniola), and the river
where he landed (now the Porto Caballo) was long called after
him the River of Martin Alonso. He carried off thence four men
and two girls, intending to steal them as slaves, but he was
compelled to restore them to their homes by Columbus, whom he
rejoined on the coast of Haiti on 6 January, 1493. It was during
this absence that the flagship was driven ashore, and Columbus
compelled to take to the "Nina". In excuse for his conduct,
Pinzon afterwards alleged stress of weather. Off the coast of
the Azores he again deserted, and set sail with all speed for
Spain, hoping to be the first to communicate the news of the
discovery. Driven by a hurricane into the port of Bayonne in
Galicia, he sent a letter to the king asking for an audience.
The monarch refusing to receive anyone but the admiral, Pinzon
sailed for Palos, which he reached on the same day as Columbus
(15 March, 1493). Setting out immediately for Madrid to make a
fresh attempt to see the king, he was met by a messenger who
forbade him to appear at court. Anger and jealousy, added to the
privations of the voyage, undermined his health, and led to his
death a few months later.
In addition to the various biographies of Columbus, consult
especially Ascensio, Martin Alonso Pinzon, estudio historico
(Madrid, 1892); Fernandez Duro, Colon, Pinzon (Madrid, 1883).
THOMAS KENNEDY
Sebastiano Del Piombo
Sebastiano del Piombo
More correctly known as Sebastiano Luciani.
Venetian portrait painter, b. at Venice, 1485; d. in Rome, 1547.
He was known as del Piombo, from the office, conferred upon him
by Clement VII, of keeper of the leaden seals. He was a pupil of
Giovanni Bellini, and later on of Giorgione. His first idea was
to become a religious or an ecclesiastic, and it is probable
that he took minor orders and had every intention of proceeding
to the priesthood, but he was strongly interested in music,
devoted considerable time to studying that art, and in so doing
became acquainted with Giorgione, a clever musician, who it
appears induced him to delay his procedure towards the
priesthood and give some attention to painting. It was on
Giorgione's recommendation that he entered the studio of Bellini
and, later, worked with Giorgione in his own studio. From the
time of his acquaintance with him, we hear no more of his
intention to embrace an ecclesiastical career. His earlier
paintings were executed in Venice, but he was invited to Rome by
Agostino Chigi, who was then building the Farnesina Palace, and
some of the decoration of the rooms was put in the hands of
Luciani. His work attracted the attention of Michelangelo, and
the two men became warm friends. A little later Raphael saw his
work and praised it highly, but they were never friends because
of the jealousy existing between Michelangelo and Raphael and
the friendship between Luciani and Michelangelo. The works which
Luciani executed in Rome and at Viterbo betrayed the strong
influence of Michelangelo. Their grandeur of composition could
have come from no other artist of the time, but their
magnificence of colour has nothing to do with the great
sculptor, and is the result of Luciani's genius. A special event
in Luciani's career is connected with the commission given to
Raphael to paint the picture of the Transfiguration. Cardinal
de' Medici, who commissioned the picture, desired at the same
time to give an altar-piece to his titular cathedral at
Narbonne, and commissioned a painting to be called the "Raising
of Lazarus", and to be of the same size as Raphael's
"Transfiguration". The two works were finished at about the same
time, and were exhibited. It was perfectly evident that Luciani
owed a great deal to the influence and the assistance of
Michelangelo, but the colouring was so magnificent, and the
effect so superb, that it created great excitement in Rome;
notwithstanding that the "Transfiguration" by Raphael was
regarded as the greater picture, Luciani's work was universally
admired. The picture is now in the English National Gallery.
Luciani painted a great many portraits, one of Cardinal de'
Medici, another of Aretino, more than one portrait of members of
the Doria family, of the Farnese, and of the Gonzaga families,
and a clever one of Baccio Bandinelli the painter. His painting
was marked by vigour of colouring, sweetness, and grace; his
portraits are exceedingly true and lifelike, the draperies well
painted, and well drawn, but the feature of his work is the
extraordinary quality of his colour and the atmosphere with all
the delicate subtleties of colour value which it gives. In many
of his pictures the colouring is as clear and fresh to-day as it
was when it was first painted, and this more especially applies
to the carnations, in other men's work the first to fade. After
the death of Raphael, he was regarded as the chief painter in
Rome, and it was then that he acquired his position as keeper of
the lead seals, an office which was lucrative and important, and
which enabled him to have more leisure than hitherto had been at
his disposal. His death took place at the time that he was
painting the chapel of the Chigi family, a work which was to be
finished by Salviati. His pictures can be studied in Florence,
Madrid, Naples, Parma, St. Petersburg, and Travesio, three of
his most notable portraits being those at Naples and Parma, and
the fine portrait of Cardinal Pole, now at St. Petersburg.
See VASARI's Lives of the Painters, various editions; and a work
by CLAUDIO TOLOMEI, cited by LANZI, and known as Pitturi di
Lendinara.
GEORGE CHARLES WILLIAMSON
St. Pionius
St. Pionius
Martyred at Smyrna, 12 March, 250. Pionius, with Sabina and
Asclepiades, was arrested on 23 February, the anniversary of St.
Polycarp's martyrdom. They had passed the previous night in
prayer and fasting. Knowing of his impending arrest, Pionius had
fastened fetters round the necks of himself and his companions
to signify that they were already condemned. People seeing them
led off unbound might suppose that they were prepared, like so
many other Christians in Smyrna, the bishop included, to
sacrifice. Early in the morning, after they had partaken of the
Holy Bread and of water, they were conducted to the forum. The
place was thronged with Greeks and Jews, for it was a great
Sabbath and therefore a general holiday in the city == an
indication of the importance of the Jews in Smyrna. Pionius
harangued the multitude. He begged the Greeks to remember what
Homer had said about not mocking the corpse of an enemy. Let
them refrain therefore from mocking those Christians who had
apostatized. He then turned to the Jews and quoted Moses and
Solomon to the same effect. He ended with a vehement refusal to
offer sacrifice. Then followed the usual interrogatories and
threats, after which Pionius and his companions were relegated
to prison, to await the arrival of the proconsul. Here they
found other confessors, among them a Montanist. Many pagans
visited them, and Christians who had sacrificed, lamenting their
fall. The latter Pionius exhorted to repentance. A further
attempt before the arrival of the proconsul was made to force
Pionius and his companions into an act of apostasy. They were
carried off to a temple where every effort was made to compel
them to participate in a sacrifice. On 12 March, Pionius was
brought before the proconsul who first tried persuasion and then
torture. Both having failed, Pionius was condemned to be burnt
alive. He suffered in company with Metrodorus, a Marcionite
priest. His feast is kept by the Latins ion 1 Feb.; by the
Greeks on 11 March. The true day of his martyrdom, according to
the Acts, was 12 March. Eusebius ("H.E.", IV, xv; "Chron.", p.
17, ed. Schoene) places the martyrdom in the reign of Antoninus.
His mistake was probably due to the fact that he found the
martyrdom of Pionius in a volume containing the Acts of Martyrs
of an earlier date. Possibly his MS. lacked the chronological
note in our present ones. For the life of Polycarp by Pionius,
see Polycarp, Saint. Did Pionius before his martyrdom celebrate
with bread and water? We know from St. Cyprian (Ep. 63) that
this abuse existed in his time. But note (1) the bread is spoken
of as Holy, but not the water; (2) it is unlikely that Pionius
would celebrate with only two persons present. It is more likely
therefore that we have an account, not of a celebration, but of
a private Communion (see Funk, "Abhandlungen", I, 287).
J.F. BACCHUS
The Pious Fund of the Californias
The Pious Fund of the Californias
(Fondo Piadoso de las Californias)
The Pious Fund of the Californias had its origin, in 1697, in
voluntary donations made by individuals and religious bodies in
Mexico to members of the Society of Jesus, to enable them to
propagate the Catholic Faith in the area then known as
California. The early contributions to the fund were placed in
the hands of the missionaries, the most active of whom were Juan
Maria Salvatierre and Francisco Eusebio Kino. The later and
larger donations took the form of agreements by the donors to
hold the property donated for the use of the missions, and to
devote the income therefrom to that purpose. In 1717 the capital
sums of practically all the donations were turned over to the
Jesuits, and from that year until the expulsion of the Society
of Jesus from Mexico the Pious Fund was administered by them. In
1768, with the expulsion of all the members of the Society from
Spanish territory by the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles III of
Spain, the crown of Spain assumed the administration of the fund
and retained it until Mexican independence was achieved in 1821.
During this period (1768-1821) missionary labours in California
were divided, the territory of Upper California being confided
to the Franciscans, and that of lower California to the
Dominicans. Prior to the expulsion of the Jesuits, thirteen
missions had been founded in Lower California, and by the year
1823 the Franciscans had established twenty-one missions in
Upper California. In 1821 the newly established Government of
Mexico assumed the administration of the fund and continued to
administer it until 1840.
In 1836 Mexico passed an Act authorizing a petition to the Holy
See for the creation of a bishopric in California, and declaring
that upon its creation "the property belonging to the Pious Fund
of the Californias shall be placed at the disposal of the new
bishop and his successors, to be by them managed and employed
for its objects, or others similar ones, always respecting the
wishes of the founders". In response to this petition, Gregory
XVI, in 1840, created the Californias into a diocese and
appointed Francisco Garcia Diego (then president of the missions
of the Californias) as the first bishop of the diocese. Shortly
after his consecration, Mexico delivered the properties of the
Pious Fund to Bishop Diego, and they were held and administered
by him until 1842, when General Santa Ana, President of Mexico,
promulgated a decree repealing the above-mentioned provision of
the Act of 1836, and directing that the Government should again
receive charge of the fund. The properties of the fund were
surrendered under compulsion to the Mexican Government in April,
1842, and on 24 October of that year a decree was promulgated by
General Santa Ana directing that the properties of the fund be
sold, and the proceeds incorporated into the national treasury,
and further provided that the sale should be for a sum
representing the annual income of the properties capitalized at
six per cent per annum. The decree provided that "the public
treasuries will acknowledge a debt of six percent per annum on
the total proceeds of the sale", and specially pledged the
revenue from tobacco for the payment of that amount "to carry on
the objects to which said fund is destined".
By the treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, 2 Feb., 1848, Upper Mexico
was ceded to the United States by Mexico, and all claims of
citizens of the United States against the Republic of Mexico
which had theretofore accrued were discharged by the terms of
the treaty. After the treaty of Guadalupe Hildago (and indeed
for some years before) Mexico made no payments for the benefit
of the missions. The archbishop and bishops of California
claimed that, as citizens of the United States, they were
entitled to demand and receive from Mexico for the benefit of
the missions within their diocese a proper proportion of the
sums which Mexico had assumed to pay in its legislative decree
of 24 October, 1842. By a convention between the United States
and Mexico, concluded 4 July, 1868, and proclaimed 1 Feb., 1869,
a Mexican and American Mixed Claims Commission was created to
consider and adjudge the validity of claims held by citizens of
either country against the Government of the other which had
arisen between the date of the treaty of Guadalupe Hildago and
the date of the convention creating the commission. To this
commission the prelates of Upper California, in 1869, presented
their claims against Mexico for such part of twenty-one years'
interest on the Pious Fund (accrued between 1848 and 1869)
payable under the terms of the Santa Ana decree of 1842, as was
properly apportionable to the missions of Upper California
(Lower California having remained Mexican territory).
Upon the submission of this claim for decision the Mexican and
American commissioners disagreed as to its proper disposition,
and it was referred to the umpire of the commission, Sir Edward
Thornton, then British Ambassador at Washington. On 11 Nov.,
1875, the umpire rendered an award in favour of the archbishop
and bishops of California. By that award the value of the funds
at the time of its sale in 1842 was finally fixed at $1,435,033.
The annual interest on this sum at six per cent (the rate being
fixed by the decree of 1842) amounted to $86,101.98 and for the
twenty-one years between 1848 and 1869 totalled $1,808,141.58.
The umpire held that of this amount, one-half should equitably
be held apportionable to the missions of Upper California,
located in American territory, and therefore awarded to the
United States for the account of the archbishop and bishops of
California $904,070.79. This judgment was paid in gold by Mexico
in accordance with the terms of the convention of 1868, in
thirteen annual installments. Mexico, however, then disputed its
obligation to pay any interest accruing after the period covered
by the award of the Mixed Claims Commission (that is, after
1869), and diplomatic negotiations were opened by the Government
of the United States with the Government of Mexico, which
resulted, after some years, in the signing of a protocol between
the two Governments on 22 May, 1902, by which the question of
Mexico's liability was submitted to the Permanent Court of
Arbitration at The Hague. This was the first International
controversy submitted to the tribunal. By the terms of the
protocol, the Arbitral court was to decide first whether the
liability of Mexico to make annual payments to the United States
for the account of the Roman Catholic bishops of California had
been rendered res judicata by the award of the Mixed Claim
Commission, and second, if not, whether the claim of the United
States, that Mexico was bound to continue such payments, was
just.
On 14 October, 1902, the tribunal at The Hague mad an award
judging that the liability of Mexico was established by the
principal of res judicata, and by virtue of the arbitral
sentence of Sir Edward Thornton, as umpire of the Mixed Claim
Commission; that in consequence the Mexican Government was bound
to pay the United States, for the use of the Roman Catholic
archbishop and bishops of California the sum of $1,402,682.67,
in extinguishment of the annuities which had accrued from 1869
to 1902, and was under the further obligation to pay
"perpetually" an annuity of $43,050.99, in money having legal
currency in Mexico. The Government of Mexico has since the date
of The Hague award complied with its provisions, and annually
pays to the Government of the United States, in Mexican silver,
for the use of the Catholic prelates of California, the sum
adjudged to be due from it as a "perpetual" annuity.
Transcript of Record of Proceedings before the Mexican and
American Mixed Claims Commission with Relation to. . . .. . . .
. .Claim No. 439, American Docket (Washington, 1902); Diplomatic
Correspondence Relative to the Pious Fund of the Californias
(Washington, 1902); United States vs. Mexico. . . .. . . . .
.Senate Document No, 28, 57th Congress, Second Session
(Washington, 1902).
GARRET W. McENERNY
The Pious Society of Missions
The Pious Society of Missions
Founded by Ven. Vincent Mary Pallotti in 1835. The members of
the society are generally called Pallottini Fathers. Its object
is to preserve the Faith among Catholics, especially among
emigrants, who are exposed to many grave dangers, and to
propagate the Faith among non-Catholics and infidels.
The Society of Missions embraces three classes: (1) priests,
clerics, and lay-brothers; (2) sisters, who help the priests in
their missionary works as teachers and catechists, and who care
for the temporal necessities of their churches and houses; (3)
affiliated ecclesiastics and lay people. The sisters live a
community life, and follow the Rule of St. Francis. They
dedicate themselves to the spiritual and temporal welfare of
their sex. They are especially engaged in missionary work among
the emigrants in America, and the infidels in Africa and
Australia. The third class consists of both the secular and
regular clergy and the laity who are affiliated with the Society
of Missions and help by their prayers, works, and financial aid
the propagation of the Faith.
The founder prescribed that his society should be a medium
between the secular and the regular clergy. He desired to foster
the work of the Catholic Apostolate. This desire of his was
strikingly symbolized by the annual celebration of the octave
(which he inaugurated in 1836) and the feast of Epiphany in Rome
(see PALLOTTI, VINCENT MARY, VENERABLE). He gave to his society
the name of "Catholic Apostolate", afterwards changed by Pius IX
to the "Pious Society of Missions". The word Pious is to be
taken in the sense of the Latin pia, i.e., devoted or dedicated
to God. On 9 Jan., 1835, Pallotti conceived the plan of his
institute and submitted it to the Apostolic See, and received
the required approbation through the cardinal vicar, Odescalchi,
on 4 April, 1835, as again by another rescript on 29 May, and
finally by Pope Gregory XVI on 14 July of the same year. Nearly
all religious orders and communities favoured the newly-created
institute with a share in all their spiritual works and
indulgences. In the first years of its existence the Pious
Society of Missions had among its affiliated members,
twenty-five cardinals, many bishops, Roman princes, and
religious communities and societies, as also men known in that
time as great apostles, Blessed Caspar del Buffalo, the founder
of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood and Maria Clausi
of the Order of St. Francis of Paula. For a time the Society of
the Propagation of Faith in Lyons feared that the new society
would interfere with its special work. Pallotti satisfied the
Holy See that the purpose of his society was different from that
of the Propagation. As the name, "Catholic Apostolate",
occasioned objections in some quarters, it was changed to the
"Pious Society of Missions".
At the Camaldolese convent near Frascati, he wrote the
constitution and rules for the society, which Pius IX approved
ad tempus, 1846. According to them, the members of the society
should, after two years' novitiate, promise four things,
poverty, chastity, obedience, and refusal of any ecclesiastical
dignity, except by obedience to the Holy See. Pope Pius X
approved ad experiendum the newly-revised rules and
constitutions, December, 1903, for six years, and gave the final
approbation on 5 Nov., 1909. The mother-house is in the Via
Pettinari 57, Rome, attached to the church of San Salvatore.
Pallotti sent his first missionary fathers to London in 1844, to
take care of Italian emigrants in the Sardinian Oratory. Rev. D.
Marquese Joseph Fa? di Bruno built the church of St. Peter in
Hatton Garden which is the principal church of the Italians in
London. He was one of the generals of the society, and wrote
"Catholic Belief", a clear and concise exposition of Catholic
doctrine, especially intended for non-Catholics. Over one
million copies of this book were sold, and it was translated
into Italian by the author. Under his generalate, the society
extended its activities beyond Rome, Rocca Priora, and London to
other countries. He received from Leo XIII the church of S.
Silvestre in Capite in Rome for the use of the English-speaking
colony there. In Masio in northern Italy, he established an
international college, a mission at Hastings, England, and in
London (St. Boniface's) for the German colony; in Limburg,
Ehrenbreitstein, and Vallemdar there are flourishing colleges
for the missions in Kamerun, West Africa. These missions have
now a vicar Apostolic and 12 houses, with 70 schools belonging
to it. In South America there are establishments at Montevideo,
Mercedes, Saladas, and Suipacha; 14 missions of the society in
Brazil embrace a territory three times the size of the State of
New York. Rev. Dr. E. Kirner started the first Italian Mission
in New York City in 1883, afterwards one in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
Newark, N.J., Hammondton, N.J., and Baltimore, Md. In North
America the Pallottini Fathers have at present over 100,000
Italian emigrants under their spiritual care. The society, in
the year 1909, was divided into four provinces, the Italian,
American, English, and German.
JOHN VOGEL
Giambattista Piranesi
Giambattista Piranesi
An Italian etcher and engraver, b. at Venice, 1720; d. in Rome,
9 Nov., 1778. His uncle Lucchesi gave him lessons in drawing,
until in 1738 his father, a mason, sent him to Rome to study
architecture under Valeriani and engraving under Vasi. He did
not return except for a brief visit to his family. In 1741 he
brought out a work on arches, bridges, and other remains of
antiquity, a notable monument of black and white art; thereafter
he opened a gallery for the sale of prints, chiefly his own. He
was a rapid and facile worker and etched more than 2000 large
plates, full of detail, vigour, and brilliancy. As a rule he
drew directly on copper, and hence his work is bold, free, and
spirited to a marked degree; his shadows are luminous, but at
times there is too much chiaroscuro. The result is a dramatic
alternation of black and white, and of light and shade, which
deservedly won for him the name of "the Rembrandt of
architecture".
Skilful and artistic printing lent an added charm to his proofs,
and the poor impressions that exist in western Europe come from
plates that were captured by British warships during the
Napoleonic wars. Some of the etchings in his twenty-nine folio
volumes are on double-elephant paper, ten feet in length. While
he achieved a work of magnitude in pictorial records of Roman
monuments of antiquity and of the Renaissance, and gave immense
archaeological, antiquarian, and topographical value to this
work, the artistic quality always predominates. He was fond of
peopling his ruins with Callot-like figures, and "like Callot
makes great use of the swelling line" (Hind). His plates
ultimately came into the possession of the pope. Although not
eminent as an architect he repaired among other edifices the
church of S. Maria del Popolo, and the Priory of Malta, in which
is a life-size statue to his memory. Piranesi married a peasant,
and his children, Francesco and Laura, were of great assistance
to him towards the end of his laborious life. Laura's touch
strongly resembles that of her father. He was decorated with the
Order of Christ and was made a member of the London Society of
Antiquaries. His works are: "Roman Antiquities" (220 plates);
Views of Rome (130 plates); Antique Statues, Vases and Busts
(350 plates); Magnificence of the Romans (47 plates).
DELABORDE, La Gravure (tr. London, 1886); HIND, A Short History
of Engraving and Etching (London, 1908); HUNEKER, Promenades of
an Impressionist (New York, 1910).
LEIGH HUNT
Pirhing, Ernricus
Ernricus Pirhing
Born at Sigarthin, near Passau, 1606; died between 1678 and
1681. At the age of twenty-two he entered the Society of Jesus,
where he gave instruction in the Sacred Sciences. He taught
canon law and Scripture for twelve years at Dillingen, where he
was still living in 1675. His "Jus canonicum in V libros
Decretalium distributum" (5 vols., Dillingen, 1674-77; 4 vols.,
Dillingen, 1722; 5 vols., Venice, 1759) marks a progress in
canonical science in Germany, for although he maintains the
classical divisions of the "Corpus Juris", he gives a complete
and synthetic explanation of the canonical legislation of the
matters which he treats. He published also, under the form of
theses, seven pamphlets on the titles of the first book of the
Decretals, which were resumed in his "Jus Canonicum"; and an
"Apologia" against two sermons of the Protestant Balduinus
(Ingolstadt, 1652; Munich, 1653). After his death one of his
colleagues published a "Synopsis Pirhingana", or resume of his
"Jus Canonicum" (Dillingen, 1695; Venice, 1711).
DE BACKER-SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliotheque des ecrivains de la C. de J.
(Liege, 1872), II, 1999; SCHULTE, Die Gesch. der Quellen u.
Literatur des kanonischen Rechts (Stuttgart, 1880), III, 143.
A. VAN HOVE.
Pirkheimer
Pirkheimer
Charitas Pirkheimer
Abbess of the Convent of St. Clara, of the Poor Clares, in
Nuremberg, and sister of the celebrated Humanist Willibald
Pirkheimer, b. in Nuremberg, 21 March, 1466; d. there 19 August,
1532. At the age of twelve she obtained a remarkable spiritual
formation in the cloister of St. Clara. It is not known when she
entered the religious life. She found a friend in Apollonia
Tucher, whom her nephew, Christoph Scheurl, entitles "The crown
of her convent, a mirror of virtue, a model of the sisterhood,"
and who became prioress in 1494. She also, toward the end of the
century, became a friend of the cousin of Apollonia, the
provost, Sixtus Tucher. This friendship finds expression in
thirty-four letters of Tucher addressed to the two nuns,
treating principally of spiritual subjects and of the
contemplative life.
Charitas, who in 1500 was a teacher and perhaps also mistress of
novices, was chosen on 20 December, 1503, as abbess. The first
twenty years of her tenure of office she passed in the peace of
contemplative life. She was able to read the Latin authors, and
thereby acquired a classic style. The works of the Fathers of
the Church, especailly of St. Jerome, were her favourite
reading. In her studies her brother Willibald was her guide and
teacher. He dedicated to her in 1513 his Latin translation of
Plutarch's Treatise "On the Delayed Vengeance of the Deity" and
praises in the preface her education and love for study, against
which Charitas, "more disturbed than astonished", protested,
claiming that she was not a scholar, but only the friend of
learned men. In 1519 he dedicated to his sisters, Charitas and
Clara, who since 1494 had also been a Poor Clare, the work of
St. Fulgentius, and in 1521 he translated for them the sermons
of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Several of Pirkheimer's humanist
friends became acquainted with the highly cultivated abbess.
Conrad Celtes presented her with his edition of the works of the
nun Hrosvit (Roswitha) of Gandersheim, and his own poems, and,
in a eulogy, praises her as a rare adornment of the German
Fatherland. Charitas thanked him, but advised him frankly to
rise from the study of pagan writings to that of the Sacred
Books, from earthly to heavenly pursuits. Christoph Scheurl
dedicated to her in 1506 his "Utilitates missae" (Uses of the
Mass); in 1515 he published the letters of Tucher to Charitas
and Apollonia. She was highly esteemed by Georg Spalatin, Kiliam
Leib, Johannes Butzbach, and the celebrated painter, Duerer. But
all the praise she received excited no pride in Charitas; she
remained simple, affable, modest and independent, uniting in
perfect harmony high education and deep piety. It was thus she
resisted the severe temptations which hung over the last ten
years of her life.
When the Lutheran doctrines were brought into Nuremberg, the
peace of the convent ceased. Charitas had already made herself
unpopular by a letter to Emser (1522) in which she thanked him
for his valiant actions as "The Powerful Defender of the
Christian Faith". Since 1524 the governor had sought to reform
the cloister and to acquire possession of its property. He
assigned to the convent of the Poor Clares Lutheran preachers to
whom the nuns were forced to listen. The acute and bigoted
inspector, Nuetzel, tirelessly renewed his attempts at
perversion, while outside the people rioted, threw stones into
the church and sang scandalous songs. Three nuns, at the request
of their parents and in spite of their resistance, were taken
out of the convent by violence. On the other hand Melanchthon,
during his residence in Nuremberg in 1525, was very friendly to
them, and the diminution of the persecution is attributable to
him. Nevertheless, the convent was deprived of the care of
souls, was highly taxed and, in fine, doomed to a slow death.
With constant courage and resourceful superiority, Charitas
defended her rights against the attacks and wiles of the
town-council, the abusive words of the preachers, and the
shameful slanders of the people. Her memoirs illuminate this
period of suffering as far as 1528. Her last experience of
earthly happiness was the impressive celebration of her jubilee
at Easter, 1529. At last a peaceful death freed her from bodily
sufferings and attacks of the enemies of her convent. Her
sister, Clara, and her niece, Katrina, daughter of Willibald,
succeeded her as abbess. The last abbess was Ursula Muffel.
Towards the end of the century the convent was closed.
Willibald Pirkheimer
German Humanist, b. at Eichstaett, 5 December, 1470; d. at
Nuremberg, 22 December, 1530. He was the son of the episcopal
councillor and distinguished lawyer, Johannes Pirkheimer, whose
family came from Nuremberg, which Willibald regarded as his
active place. He studied jurisprudence, the classics, and music
at the Universities of Padua and Pavia (1489-95). In 1495 he
married Crescentia Rieter (d. 1504), by whom he had five
daughters. >From 1498 to 1523, when he voluntarily retired,
he was one of the town councillors of Nuremberg, where he was
the centre of the Humanistic movement, and was considered one of
the most distinguished representatives of Germany. His house
stood open to everyone who sought intellectual improvement, and
was celebrated by Celtis as the gathering place of scholars and
artists. His large correspondence shows the extent of his
literary connexions. In 1499, with the aid of a capable soldier,
he led the Nuremberg contingent in the Swiss war, his classical
history of which appeared in 1610 and won for him the name of
the German Xenophon. Maximilian appointed him imperial
councillor. He owes his fame to his many-sided learning, and few
were as widely read as he in the Greek and Latin literatures. He
translated Greek classics, e. g., Euclid, Xenophon, Plato,
Ptolemy, Plutarch, Lucian, and the Church Fathers into Latin.
Like Erasmus, he paid less attention to a literal rendering than
to the sense of his translations, and thus produced works which
can be compared with the best of the translated literature of
that period. He also wrote a work on the earliest history of
Germany, and was interested in astronomy, mathematics, the
natural sciences, numismatics, and art. Albert Duerer was one of
his friends and has painted his characteristic portrait. He
defended Reuchlin in the latter's dispute with the theologians
of Cologne.
At the beginning of the Reformation he took sides with Luther,
whose able opponent, Johann Eck, he attacked in the coarse
satire "Eckius dedolatus" (Eck planed down). On behalf of Luther
he also wrote a second bitter satire, in an unprinted comedy,
called "Schutzschrift". Consequently his name was included in
the Bull of excommunication of 1520, and in 1521 he was absolved
"not without painful personal humiliation", was requred to
acknowledge Luther's doctrine to be heresy, and denounce it
formally by oath. Nevertheless, up to 1525 his sympathies were
with the Reformation, but as the struggtle went on, like many
other Humanists, he turned aside from the movement and drew
towards the Church, with which he did not wish to break. In
Luther, whom he had at first regarded as a reformer, he saw
finally a teacher of false doctrines, "completely a prey to
delusion and led by the evil fiend". Luther's theological ideas
had never been matters of conscience to him, hence the results
of the changes, the decay of the fine arts, the spread of the
movement socially and economically, the religious quarrels, and
the excesses of zealots repelled him as it did his friend
Erasmus who was in intellectual sympathy with him. His sister,
Charitas, was the Abbess of the Convent of St. Clara at
Nuremberg, where another sister, Clara, and his daughters,
Katharina and Crescentia, were also nuns. From 1524 they were
troubled by the petty annoyances and "efforts at conversion" of
the city council that had become Lutheran. This affected him
deeply and aided in extinguishing his enthusiasm for the
Reformation. His last literary labour, which he addressed to the
council in 1530, was on behalf of the convent; this was the
"Oratio apologetica monialium nomine", a master-piece of its
kind.
CHARITAS -- Charitas Pirkheimer, Denkwuerdigkeiten, ed.
HOefler (Bamberg, 1852); Loose, Aus dem Leben der Charitas
Pirkheimer (Dresden, 1870); Binder, Charitas Pirkheimer (2nd
ed., Freiburg, 1878).
WILLIBALD -- Pirkheimer, Opera (Frankfort, 1619); Roth,
Willibald Pirkheimer (Halle, 1887); Hagen, Pirkheimer in seinem
Verhaeltnis zum Humanismus und zur Reformation (Nuremberg,
1882); Drews, Pirkheimers Stellung zur Reformation (Leipzig,
1887); Reimann, Pirkheimerstudien (Berlin, 1900).
KLEMENS LOeFFLER.
Piro Indians
Piro Indians
A tribe of considerable importance, ranging by water for a
distance of three hundred miles along the upper Ucayali (Tambo)
River, and its affluents, the Apurimac and Urubamba, Department
of Loretto, in northeastern Peru. Their chief center in the last
century was the mission town of Santa Rosa de los Piros, at the
confluence of the Tambo and Urubamba (Santa Ana). To the
Quicha-speaking tribes of Peru they are known as Chantaquiro,
nearly equivalent to "Black Teeth", from their former custom of
staining their teeth and gums with a black dye from the chonta
or black-wood palm (peperonia tinctorioides). They are also
known as Simiriches. They belong to the great Arawakan
linguistic stock, to which along belong the warlike Campa of the
extreme upper Ucayali and the celebrated Moxos (q. v.) of
Bolivia, whose main territory was about the lower Orinoco, and
in the West Indies. The Piro excel all tribes of the Ucayali
both in its strength and vitality, a fact which may be due to
the more moderate temperature and superior healthfulness of
their country. As contrasted with their neighbours they are
notably jovial and versatile, but aggressively talkative,
inclined to bullying, and not always dependable. They are of
quick intelligence and have the Indian gift for languages, many
of them speaking Quicha, Spanish, and sometimes Portuguese, in
addition to their own. Like most of the tribes of the region
they are semi-agricultural, depending chiefly upon the plantain
or banana, and the maguey (manhiot), which produce abundantly
almost without care. The preparation from these of the
intoxicating masato or chicha, to which they are given to
excess, forms the principal occupation of the women in all of
the tribes of the Ucayali. They also make use of fish and the
oil from turtle eggs. Their houses are light, open structures,
thatched with palm leaves, with sleeping hammocks, hand-made
earthen pots, and the wooden masato trough for furniture. Their
dress is a short of shirt for the men, and a short skirt for the
women, both of their own weaving from native cotton and died
black. They wear silver nose pendants and paint their faces
black. The men are splendid and daring boatmen, in which
capacity their services are in constant requisition. In their
primitive condition the Piro used the bow, lance, and blowgun
with poisoned arrows. They were polygamous and made constant
raids upon the weaker tribes for the purpose of carrying off
women. They buried their dead, without personal belongings, in
canoes in the earthen floor of the house. Their principal
divinities were a benevolent creative spirit or hero-god called
Huyacali, and an evil spirit, Saminchi, whom they greatly
feared. They had few dances or other ceremonies.
The first missions on the upper Ucayali were undertaken in 1673
under Father Biedma, of the Franciscan Convent of the Twelve
Apostles in Peru, who had already been at work in the Huallaga
since 1631. In 1674 the warlike Campa attacked and destroyed the
mission established among them and massacred four missionaries
together with an Indian neophyte. In 1687 Father Biedma himself
was killed by the Piro. Others were murdered or sank under the
climate, until in 1694, when Frs. Valero, Huerta, and Zavala
were killed, the Ucayali mission was abandoned. They were
renewed after some years with a fair degree of success, but in
1742 were again wiped out and all the missionaries brutally
butchered in a terrible rising headed by the Campa, under the
leadership of an apostate Indian, Juan Santos, who took the name
of Atahualpa, claiming to be a descendant of the last of the
Incas. In 1747 Fr. Manuel Albaran, descending the Apurimac, was
killed by the Piro. In 1767 another general rising resulted in
the death of all but one of the sixteen missionaries of the
Franciscan College of Ocopa, Peru, which had taken over the work
in 1754. In 1790 the Franciscans again had eighteen missions in
operation on the upper Ucayali and Huallaga region, with a total
population of 3494 souls. In 1794 an attempt to gather the Piro
into a mission was defeated by an epidemic, which caused them to
scatter into the forests. In 1799 (or 1803 -- Raimond) the
attempt was successfully carried out by Father Pedro Garcia at
the mission of Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Bepuano. In 1815 the
principal and last mission for the tribe was established by
Father Manuel Plaza under the name Santa Rosa de Lima de los
Piros. After the revolution, which made Peru a separate
government, the missions were neglected, most of the
missionaries were withdrawn, the neophytes sought employment at
the river ports or in the rubber forests, or rejoined their wild
kindred, and in 1835, only one mission station, Sarayuca,
remained upon the Ucayali. The Piro, however, still rank among
the important tribes, although, on account of their wandering
habit, their true number is unknown. Hervas gives the Piro
language three dialects, and states that Fr. Enrique Richter (c.
1685) prepared a vocabulary and catechism in it and in several
other languages. Castelnau and Marcoy also give vocabularies.
BRINTON, The American Race (New York, 1891); CASTELNAU,
Expedition, dans les parties centrales l'Amerique du Sud, IV (6
vols., Paris, 1850-1); GALT, Indians of Peru in Smithsonian
Rept. for 1877 (Washington, 1878); HERNDON, Exploration of the
Valley of the Amazon (Washington, 1853); HERVAS, Catalogo de las
Lenguas, I (Madrid, 1800); Labre report in Scottish Geog. Mag.
VI (Edinburgh, 1890); MARKHAM, Tribes in the Valley of the
Amazon in Jour. Anth. Inst., XXIV (London, 1895); MARCOY, Voyage
`a travers l'Amerique du Sud (2 vols, Paris, 1869); ORDINAIRE,
Les Sauvages du Perou in Revue d'Ethnographie, VI (Paris, 1887);
ORTON, The Andes and the Amazon (3rd ed., New York, 1876);
RAIMONDI, Apuntes sobre la Provincia litoral de Loreto (Lima,
1862), in part tr. by BOLLEART in Anthropological Review I
(London, 1863); RECLUS, South America, I (New York, 1894); SMYTH
and LOWE, Journey from Lima to Para (London, 1836).
JAMES MOONEY
Pisa
Pisa
ARCHDIOCESE OF PISA (PISAE)
Archdiocese in Tuscany, central Italy. The city is situated on
the Arno, six miles from the sea, on a fertile plain, while the
neighbouring mountains yield marble, alabaster, copper, and
other mineral products; mineral waters abound in the province.
The famous duomo, or cathedral, begun (1063) by Buschetto and
consecrated by Gelasius II (1118), is a basilica in the shape of
a Latin cross, with five naves, the columns of which are of
oriental granite. The upper portion of the fac,ade is formed by
five rows of columns, one above the other; the bas-reliefs of
the four bronze doors were executed by Domenico Partegiani and
Augusto Serrano, after the designs of Giambologna and others.
The cupola was painted by Orazio Riminaldi and Michele
Cinganelli; the altars are all of Luna marble. Among the notable
objects in this cathedral are the octagonal pulpit, the urn of
St. Ranieri, and the lamp of Possenti da Pietrasanta, under
which Galileo studied the isochronism of the pendulum. In front
of the duomo is the baptistery, a round structure, with a cupola
surmounted by a statue of St. John the Baptist; it was erected
in 1152. Beside the duomo is the celebrated leaning campanile.
The camposanto (begun in 1278, completed in 1464) is a real
museum of painting and of medieval sculpture; its architect was
Giovanni Pisano, by whom also are six statues placed over one of
the entrances. The frescoes are by Giotto, Orcagna, Benozzo
Gozzoli, Spinello Aretino, Simone Memmi, and Pietro Laurati. It
contains the tomb of the Emperor Henry VII. Other churches are
Santa Maria della Spina (1230; 1323); San Nicola, dating from
about 1000; the church of the Knights of S. Stefano (1555), a
work of Vasari; S. Francesco (thirteenth century); S. Caterina
(1253), which belongs to the seminary and contains the
mausoleums of Bishop Saltarelli and of Gherardo Compagni; S.
Anna has two canvasses by Ghirlandajo; S. Michele (1018); S.
Frediano (ninth century); S. Sepolcro (1150); S. Paolo (805?)
called the old duomo; S. Pietro in Grado, which dates from the
fifth century, and was restored in the ninth. The episcopal
residence, of the twelfth century, has important archives. Other
buildings of interest are the Loggia dei mercanti, by
Bountalenti, and the university (1105-1343), with which were
united several colleges, as the Puteano, Ferdinando, Vittoriano,
and Ricci. Outside the city are the Certosa di Calci, the Bagni
di Pisa, ancient baths which were restored by Countess Matilda,
and the Villa Reale di S. Rossore.
Pisa is the ancient Pisae, in antiquity held to be a colony of
Pisae in Elis. Later, it probably belonged to the Etruscans,
though often troubled by the Ligurians. The people devoted
themselves to commerce and to piracy. From 225 B.C., they were
in amicable relations with the Romans, who used the port of
Pisae in the Punic War, and against the Ligurians, in 193. By
the Julian law, if not earlier, the town obtained Roman
citizenship. Little mention is made of it in the Gothic War. In
553 it submitted to Narses, of its own accord; after the Lombard
invasion, it seems to have enjoyed a certain independence, and
it was not until the eighth century that Pisa had a Lombard dux,
while, in the ninth century, it alternated with Lucca as the
seat of the Marquis of Tuscany. The war between Pisa and Lucca
(1003) was the first war between two Italian cities. In 1005,
the town was sacked by the Saracens, under the famous Musetto
(Mugheid al Ameri), who, in turn, was vanquished by the Pisans
and Genoese, in Sardinia. In 1029, the Pisans blockaded
Carthage; and in 1050, Musetto having again come to Sardinia,
they defeated him with the assistance of Genoa and of the
Marquis of Lunigiana; but the division of the conquered island
became a source of dissension between the allied cities, and the
discord was increased when Urban II invested the Pisans with the
suzerainty of Corsica, whose petty lords (1077) had declared
their wish to be fiefs only of the Holy See. In 1126, Genoa
opened hostilities by an assault on Porto Pisano, and only
through the intervention of Innocent II (1133) was peace
re-established. Meanwhile, the Pisans, who for centuries had had
stations in Calabria and in Sicily, had extended their commerce
to Africa and to Spain, and also to the Levant. The Pisans
obtained great concessions in Palestine and in the principality
of Antioch by lending their ships for the transportation of
crusaders in 1099, and thereafter people of all nations were to
be found in their city. In 1063 they had made an attempt against
Palermo, and in 1114 led by the consul, Azzo Marignani,
conquered the Balearic Islands. Pisa supported the emperors at
an early date, and Henry IV, in 1084, confirmed its statutes and
its maritime rights. With its fleet, it supported the expedition
of Lothair II to Calabria, destroying in 1137 the maritime
cities of Ravello, La Scala, la Fratta, and above all, Amalfi,
which then lost its commercial standing. The Pisans also gave
their assistance to Henry IV in the conquest of Sicily, and as
reward lost the advantages that they had then enjoyed.
The reprisals of Innocent III in Sardinia led the Pisans to
espouse the cause of Otto IV and that of Frederick II, and Pisa
became the head and refuge of the Ghibellines of Tuscany, and,
accordingly, a fierce enemy of Florence. The victory of
Montaperti (1260) marks the culmination of Pisan power.
Commercial jealousy, political hatred, and the fact that Pisa
accorded protection to certain petty lords of Corsica, who were
in rebellion against Genoa, brought about another war, in which
one hundred and seven Genoese ships defeated one hundred and
three ships of the Pisans, at La Meloria, the former taking ten
thousand prisoners. All would have been lost, if Ugolino della
Gherardesca, capitano del popolo and podest`a, had not
providently taken charge of the Government. But as he had
protected the Guelphs, Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini took
up arms against him, and shut him up (1288) in the tower of the
Gualdini, where with his sons he starved to death (Inferno,
XXXIII, 13). At the peace of 1290, Pisa was compelled to resign
its rights over Corsica and the possession of Sassari in
Sardinia. The Pisans hoped to retrieve themselves by inviting
Henry VII to establish himself in their city, offering him two
million florins for his war against Florence, and their fleet
for the conquest of Naples; but his death in 1313 put an end to
these hopes. Thereupon they elected (1314) Uguccione della
Fagiuola of Lucca as their lord; but they rid themselves of him
in the same year. At the approach of Louis the Bavarian, they
besought that prince not to enter Pisa; but Castruccio degli
Antelminelli incited Louis to besiege the city, with the result
that Pisa surrendered in 1327, and paid a large sum of money to
the victor. In 1329 Louis resided there again, with the
antipope, Pietro di Corvara. Internal dissensions and the
competition of Genoa and Barcelona brought about the decay of
Pisan commerce. To remedy financial evils, the duties on
merchandise were increased, which, however, produced a greater
loss, for Florence abandoned the port of Pisa. In 1400 Galeazzo
Visconti bought Pisa from Gherardo Appiani, lord of the city. In
1405, Gabriele M. Visconti having stipulated the sale of Pisa to
the Florentines, the Pisans made a supreme effort to oppose that
humiliation; the town, however, was taken and its principal
citizens exiled. The expedition of Charles VIII restored its
independence (1494-1509); but the city was unable to rise again
to its former prosperity. Under Cosimo de' Medici, there were
better times, especially for the university.
Among the natives of Pisa were: B. Pellegrino (seventh century);
B. Chiara (d. in 1419), and B. Pietro, founder of the Hermits of
St. Jerome (d. in 1435); B. Giordano da Pisa, O. P., (d. in
1311); and Gregory X. Connected with the church of San Pietro in
Grado there is a legend according to which St. Peter landed at
Pisa, and left there his disciple St. Pierinus. The first known
bishop was Gaudentius, present at the Council of Rome (313).
Other bishops were St. Senior (410), who consecrated St.
Patrick; Joannes (493); one, name unknown, who took part in the
schism of the Three Chapters (556); Alexander (648); Maurianus
(680); one, name unknown, taken prisoner by Charlemagne at the
siege of Pavia (774); Oppizo (1039), the founder of the
Camaldolite convent of S. Michele; Landulfus (1077), sent by
Gregory VII as legate to Corsica; Gerardus (1080), an able
controversialist against the Greeks; Diabertus (1085), the first
archbishop, to whom Urban II gave the sees of Corsica as
suffragans in 1099, the first Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem;
Pietro Moriconi (1105). In 1121, on account of the jealousy of
Genoa, the bishops of Corsica were made immediately dependent
upon the Holy See, but Honorius II (1126) restored the former
status of Pisa as their metropolitan; in 1133, however, Innocent
II divided them between Pisa and Genoa, which was then made an
archdiocese. Thereafter, Pisa received for suffragans also
Populonia and two sees in Sardinia. Other bishops were: Cardinal
Uberto Lanfranchi (1132), who often served as pontifical legate;
Cardinal Villano Gaetani (1145), compelled to flee from the city
on account of his fidelity to Alexander III (1167); Lotario
Rosari (1208), also Patriarch of Jerusalem (1216); Federico
Visconti (1254), who held provincial synods in 1258, 1260, and
1262; Oddone della Sala (1312) had litigations with the
republic, and later became Patriarch of Alexandria; Simone
Saltorelli; Giovanni Scarlatti (1348), who had been legate to
Armenia and to the emperor at Constantinople; Lotto Gambacorta
(1381), compelled to flee after the death of his brother Pietro,
tyrant of Pisa (1392); Alamanno Adinari (1406), a cardinal who
had an important part in the conciliabulum of Pisa and in the
Council of Constance; Cardinal Francesco Salviati Riario (1475),
hung at Florence in connexion with the conspiracy of the Pazzi;
in 1479 he was succeeded by his nephew, Rafaele Riario, who
narrowly escaped being a victim of the same conspiracy; Cesare
Riario (1499); Cardinal Scipione Rebita (1556); Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici (1560), a son of Cosimo; Cardinal Angelo
Niccolini (1564); Cardinal Antonio Pozzi (1582), founder of the
Puteano college, and author of works on canon and on civil law:
Giulio de' Medici (1620), served on missions for the duke,
founded the seminary, introduced wise reforms, and evinced great
charity during the pest of 1629; Cardinal Scipione
Pannocchieschi (1636); Cardinal Cosimo Corsi (1853-70).
Important councils have been in 1135, against Anacletus II and
the heretic Enrico, leader of the Petrobrusiani in 1409, which
increased the schism by the deposition of Gregory XII and of
Benedict XIII, and by the election of Alexander V; in 1511,
brought about by a few schismatic cardinals and French bishops
at the instigation of Louis XII against Julius II.
Leghorn, Pescia, Pontremoli, and Volterra are the suffragans of
Pisa; the archdiocese has 136 parishes; 190,000 inhabitants; 10
religious houses of men, and 29 of women; 6 educational
establishments for boys, and 13 for girls; 1 Catholic daily
paper.
CAPPELLETTI, Le Chiese d'Italia, XVI; TRONCI, Annuali Pisani
(Pisa, 1868-71); DAL BORGO, Dissertazioni sulla storia pisana
(Pisa, 1761-68); CHIRONE EPIDAURICO, Navigazione e commercio
pisano (Pisa, 1797); FEDELI, I documenti pontificii riguardanti
l'Universit`a di Pisa (Pisa, 1908); SUPINO, Pisa in Italia
Artistica, XVI (Bergamo, 1905).
U. BENIGNI
University of Pisa
University of Pisa
In the eleventh century there were many jurisconsults at Pisa
who lectured on law; prominent among them were Opitone and
Sigerdo. There also was preserved a codex of the Pandects,
dated, it was said, from Justinian. Four professors of the Law
School of Bologna, Bulgarus, Burgundius, Uguccione, and Bandino,
successors of Irnerius, were trained here; Burgundius acquired
renown by his translation of the Pandects and of Greek works on
medicine. Gerardo de Fasiano, Lambertuccio Arminzochi, Zacchia
da Volterra, Giovanni Fagioli, Ugo Benci, Baldo da Forli, and
Giovanni d'Andrea taught at Pisa in the thirteenth century. In
the same century medicine also was taught; the most famous
professor was Guido of Pisa, who afterwards went to Bologna
(1278). In 1338, as Benedict XII had placed Bologna under
interdict, Ranieri da Forli and Bartolo removed to Pisa with a
large following. The Studium of Pisa is mentioned in the
communal documents of 1340. In 1343 Clement VI erected a studium
generale, with all the faculties, including theology; and
Charles IV confirmed it in 1355.
The university, however, did not flourish. From 1359 to 1364 it
was closed, and was only reopened by Urban VI. Meantime,
however, the teaching of law was not discontinued. In 1406 Pisa
fell into the power of the Florentines who suppressed the
university. In 1473 Lorenzo de' Medici with Sixtus IV's approval
closed the University of Florence and reopened Pisa. For its
endowment the goods of the Church and clergy were put under
contribution to such an extent that Paul III in 1534 recalled
the concessions of his predecessors. The most celebrated
teachers of this first epoch were the jurisconsults Francesco
Tigrini, Baldo degli Ubaldi, Lancellotto Decio, Francesco
Alcolti, Baldo Bartolini, Giasone del Maino, Bartolommeo and
Mariano Socini; the physicians, Guido da Prato, Ammanati,
Ugolino da Montecatini, Alessandro Sermoneta, Albertino da
Cremona, Pietro Leoni, and Cristoforo Prati; the Humanists,
Bartolommeo da Pratorecchi, Lorenzo Lippi, Andrea Dati, Mariano
Tucci; the theologians, Bernardino Cherichini (1478) and Giorgio
Benigni Salviati.
In 1543 Cosimo de' Medici undertook to restore the university,
and to this end Paul III made large concessions out of the
revenues of the Church and monasteries. Several colleges were
founded, such as the Ducal College, the Ferdinando, and the
Puteano (Pozzi for the Piedmontese). The university at this time
became famous especially by its cultivation of the natural
sciences. Among its noted scientists were: Cesalpino (botany,
medicine, philosophy); Galileo Galilei (mathematics and
astronomy); Borelli (mechanics and medicine); Luca Ghini, first
director of the botanical gardens (1544); Andrea Vesalio, Realdo
Colombo, Gabriele Falloppo; Giovanni Risischi, and Lambeccari in
anatomy; Baccio Baldini, Vidio Vidi, Girolamo Mercuriale,
Rodrigo Fonseca (seventeenth century), Fil. Cavriami, Marcello
Malpighi in medicine. In view of its progressive spirit, Pisa
may be called the cradle of modern science. The professors of
jurisprudence were rather conservative, but there were not
wanting able thinkers, such as the two Torellis, Francesco
Vegio, Asinio, Giacomo Mandelli, the two Facchinis, and the
Scotsman Dempster; Nicola Bonaparte, who introduced into Pisa
the critical-historical study of Roman Law inaugurated by Cujas,
Giuseppe Averani, Stefano Fabrucci, historian of the university,
Bernardo Tanucci, afterwards minister of Charles III of Naples.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the university was
again in a precarious condition; but the new Lorenzian dynasty
sought to strengthen it by increasing the scientific institutes,
and revising the statutes; thus after 1744 the rector was no
longer elected by the scholars or from their ranks, but had to
be one of the professors. In the eighteenth century Valsecchi
and Berti won distinction in theology; Andrea Guadegni, Bart.
Franc. Pellegrini, Migliorotto Maccioni, Flaminio Dal Borgo,
Gian Maria Lampredi, Sandonnini (canonist), the criminalists
della Pura and Ranuccia in jurisprudence; Politi, Corsini,
Antonioli, Sarti in letters; Guido Grandi, Claudio Fromond,
Anton Nicola Branchi, Lorenzo Pignotti, Lorenzo Tilli, and
Giorgio Santi in natural science; Angelo Gatti, Antonio Matani,
Franc. Torrigiani in medicine; Brogiani and Berlinghieri in
anatomy. In 1808 the regulations of the French universities were
introduced, but were superseded by others in 1814. The
professors were then divided into the faculties of theology, law
(comprising philosophy and literature), and medicine. But the
number of the chairs increased; in 1840 there were six
faculties. In 1847 the "Annali delle Universit`a toscane" were
published.
In 1851, for political reasons, the Universities of Pisa and
Siena were united, the faculties of jurisprudence and theology
located at Siena, and those of philosophy and medicine at Pisa.
The former regime was re-established in 1859 with such
modifications as the Law of Casati required. In 1873 all chairs
of theology were suppressed throughout Italy. Noted professors
in law were Lorenzo Quartieri, Federico del Rosso, Valeri,
Poggi, Salvagnoli, Franc. Ferrara, P. Emilio Imbriani, and
Franc. Carrara (criminalist). Science and letters were
represented by the physicist Gerbi; the chemist Piria; the
mathematician Betti; the physicians Puccinotti, Pacini,
Marcacci, Ranzi (pathology); the criminalist Rosellini, the
Latinist Ferrucci; and Francesco de Sanctis, literary critic.
Besides the usual faculties, Pisa has schools of engineering,
agriculture, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, and a normal high
school. In 1910-11 there were 159 instructors and 1160 students.
FABRONI, Historia Acad. Pisanae (Pisa, 1791); DAL BORGO,
Dissertazione epistolare sull' origine dell' univ. di Pisa
(Pisa, 1765); CALISSE, Cenni storici sull' Universit`a di Pisa
in Annuario della Universit`a di Pisa (1899-1900); BUONAMICI,
Della scuola Pisana del diritto romano ecc. (Pisa, 1874); IDEM,
I giureconsulti di Pisa al tempo della scuola Bolognese (Rome,
1888); FEDELI, I documenti pontificii riguardanti l'Universit`a
di Pisa (Pisa, 1908).
U. BENIGNI
Council of Pisa
Council of Pisa
Preliminaries.
The great Schism of the West had lasted thirty years (since
1378), and none of the means employed to bring it to an end had
been successful. Compromise or arbitral agreement between the
two parties had never been seriously attempted; surrender had
failed lamentably owing to the obstinacy of the rival popes, all
equally convinced of their rights; action, that is the
interference of princes and armies, had been without result.
During these deplorable divisions Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and
Gregory XII had in turn replaced Urban VI (Bartholomew Prignano)
in the See of Rome, while Benedict XIII had succeeded Clement
VII (Robert of Geneva) in that of Avignon.
The cardinals of the reigning pontiffs being greatly
dissatisfied, both with the pusillanimity and nepotism of
Gregory XII and the obstinacy and bad will of Benedict XIII,
resolved to make use of a more efficacious means, namely a
general council. The French king, Charles V, had recommended
this, at the beginning of the schism, to the cardinals assembled
at Anagni and Fondi in revolt against Urban VI, and on his
deathbed he had expressed the same wish (1380). It had been
upheld by several councils, by the cities of Ghent and Florence,
by the Universities of Oxford and Paris, and by the most
renowned doctors of the time, for example: Henry of Langenstein
("Epistola pacis", 1379, "Epistola concilii pacis", 1381);
Conrad of Gelnhausen ("Epistola Concordiae", 1380); Gerson
(Sermo coram Anglicis); and especially the latter's master,
Pierre d'Ailly, the eminent Bishop of Cambrai, who wrote of
himself: "A principio schismatis materiam concilii generalis
primus ... instanter prosequi non timui" (Apologia Concilii
Pisani, apud Tschackert). Encouraged by such men, by the known
dispositions of King Charles VI and of the University of Paris,
four members of the Sacred College of Avignon went to Leghorn
where they arranged an interview with those of Rome, and where
they were soon joined by others. The two bodies thus united were
resolved to seek the union of the Church in spite of everything,
and thenceforth to adhere to neither of the competitors. On 2
and 5 July, 1408, they addressed to the princes and prelates an
encyclical letter summoning them to a general council at Pisa on
25 March, 1409. To oppose this project Benedict convoked a
council at Perpignan while Gregory assembled another at Aquilea,
but those assemblies met with little success, hence to the
Council of Pisa were directed all the attention, unrest, and
hopes of the Catholic world. The Universities of Paris, Oxford,
and Cologne, many prelates, and the most distinguished doctors,
like d'Ailly and Gerson, openly approved the action of the
revolted cardinals. The princes on the other hand were divided,
but most of them no longer relied on the good will of the rival
popes and were determined to act without them, despite them,
and, if needs were, against them.
Meeting of the Council
On the feast of the Annunciation, 4 patriarchs, 22 cardinals,
and 80 bishops asembled in the cathedral of Pisa under the
presidency of Cardinal de Malesset, Bishop of Palestrina. Among
the clergy were the representatives of 100 absent bishops, 87
abbots with the proxies of those who could not come to Pisa, 41
priors and generals of religious orders, 300 doctors of theology
or canon law. The ambassadors of all the Christian kingdoms
completed this august assembly. Judicial procedure began at
once. Two cardinal deacons, two bishops, and two notaries
gravely approached the church doors, opened them, and in a loud
voice, in the Latin tongue, called upon the rival pontiffs to
appear. No one replied. "Has anyone been appointed to represent
them?" they added. Again there was silence. The delegates
returned to their places and requested that Gregory and Benedict
be declared guilty of contumacy. On three consecutive days this
ceremony was repeated without success, and throughout the month
of May testimonies were heard against the claimants, but the
formal declaration of contumacy did not take place until the
fourth session. In defence of Gregory, a German embassy
unfavourable to the project of the assembled cardinals went to
Pisa (15 April) at the instance of Robert of Bavaria, King of
the Romans. John, Archbishop of Riga, brought before the council
several excellent objections, but in general the German
delegates spoke so blunderingly that they aroused hostile
manifestations and were compelled to leave the city as
fugitives. The line of conduct adopted by Carlo Malatesta,
Prince of Rimini, was more clever. Robert by his awkward
friendliness injured Gregory's otherwise most defendable cause;
but Malatesta defended it as a man of letters, an orator, a
politician, and a knight, though he did not attain the desired
success. Benedict refused to attend the council in person, but
his delegates arrived very late (14 June), and their claims
aroused the protests and laughter of the assembly. The people of
Pisa overwhelmed them with threats and insults. The Chancellor
of Aragon was listened to with little favour, while the
Archbishop of Tarragona made a declaration of war more daring
than wise. Intimidated by rough demonstrations, the ambassadors,
among them Boniface Ferrer, Prior of the Grande Chartreuse,
secretly left the city and returned to their master.
The pretended preponderance of the French delegates has been
often attacked, but the French element did not prevail either in
numbers, influence, or boldness of ideas. The most remarkable
characteristic of the assembly was the unanimity which reigned
among the 500 members during the month of June, especially
noticeable at the fifteenth general session (5 June, 1409). When
the usual formality was completed with the request for a
definite condemnation of Peter de Luna and Angelo Corrario, the
Fathers of Pisa returned a sentence until then unexampled in the
history of the Church. All were stirred when the Patriarch of
Alexandria, Simon de Cramaud, addressed the august meeting:
"Benedict XIII and Gregory XII", said he, "are recognised as
schismatics, the approvers and makers of schism, notorious
heretics, guilty of perjury and violation of solemn promises,
and openly scandalising the universal Church. In consequence,
they are declared unworthy of the Sovereign Pontificate, and are
ipso facto deposed from their functions and dignities, and even
driven out of the Church. It is forbidded to them henceforward
to consider themselves to be Sovereign Pontiffs, and all
proceedings and promotions made by them are annulled. The Holy
See is declared vacant and the faithful are set free from their
promise of obedience." This grave sentence was greeted with
joyful applause, the Te Deum was sung, and a solemn procession
was ordered next day, the feast of Corpus Christi. All the
members appended their signatures to the decree of the council,
and every one thought that the schism was ended forever. On 15
June the cardinals met in the archiepiscopal palace of Pisa to
proceed with the election of a new pope. The conclave lasted
eleven days. Few obstacles intervened from outside to cause
delay. Within the council, it is said, there were intrigues for
the election of a French pope, but, through the influence of the
energetic and ingenious Cardinal Cossa, on 26 June, 1409, the
votes were unanimously cast in the favour of Cardinal Peter
Philarghi, who took the name of Alexander V. His election was
expected and desired, as testified by universal joy. The new
pope announced his election to all the sovereigns of
Christendom, from whom he received expressions of lively
sympathy for himself and for the position of the Church. He
presided over the last four sessions of the council, confirmed
all the ordinances made by the cardinals after their refusal of
obedience to the antipopes, united the two sacred colleges, and
subsequently declared that he would work energetically for
reform.
Judgment of the Council of Pisa
The right of the cardinals to convene a general council to put
an end to the schism seemed to themselves indisputable. This was
a consequence of the natural principle of discovering within
itself a means of safety: Salus populi suprema lex esto, i.e.,
the chief interest is the safety of the Church and the
preservation of her indispensable unity. The tergiversations and
perjuries of the two pretenders seemed to justify the united
sacred colleges. "Never", said they, "shall we succeed in ending
the schism while these two obstinate persons are at the head of
the opposing parties. There is no undisputed pope who can summon
a general council. As the pope is doubtful, the Holy See must be
considered vacant. We have therefore a lawful mandate to elect a
pope who will be undisputed, and to convoke the universal Church
that her adhesion may strengthen our decision". Famous
universities urged and upheld the cardinals in this conclusion.
And yet, from the theological and judicial point of view, their
reasoning might seem false, dangerous, and revolutionary. For if
Gregory and Benedict were doubtful, so were the cardinals whom
they had created. If the fountain of their authority was
uncertain, so was their competence to convoke the universal
Church and to elect a pope. Plainly, this is arguing in a
circle. How then could Alexander V, elected by them, have
indisputable rights to the recognition of the whole of
Christendom? Further, it was to be feared that certain spirits
would make use of this temporary expedient to transform it into
a general rule, to proclaim the superiority of the sacred
college and of the council to the pope, and to legalize
henceforth the appeals to a future council, which had already
commenced under King Philip the Fair. The means used by the
cardinals could not succeed even temporarily. The position of
the Church became still more precarious; instead of two heads
there were three wandering popes, persecuted and exiled from
their capitals. Yet, inasmuch as Alexander was not elected in
opposition to a generally recognized pontiff, nor by schismatic
methods, his position was better than that of Clement VII and
Benedict XIII, the popes of Avignon. An almost general opinion
asserts that both he and his successor, John XXIII, were true
popes. If the pontiffs of Avignon had a colourable title in
their own obedience, such a title can be made out still more
clearly for Alexander V in the eyes of the universal Church. In
fact the Pisan pope was acknowledged by the majority of the
Church, i.e. by France, England, Portugal, Bohemia, Prussia, a
few countries of Germany, Italy, and the County Venaissin, while
Naples, Poland, Bavaria, and part of Germany continued to obey
Gregory, and Spain and Scotland remained subject to Benedict.
Theologians and canonists are severe on the Council of Pisa. On
the one hand, a violent partisan of Benedict's, Boniface Ferrer,
calls it "a conventicle of demons". Theodore Urie, a supporter
of Gregory, seems to doubt whether they gathered at Pisa with
the sentiments of Dathan and Abiron or those of Moses. St.
Antoninus, Cajetan, Turrecremata, and Raynald openly call it a
conventicle, or at any rate cast doubt on its authority. On the
other hand, the Gallican school either approves of it or pleads
extenuating circumstances. Noel Alexander asserts that the
council destroyed the schism as far as it could. Bossuet says in
his turn: "If the schism that devastated the Church of God was
not exterminated at Pisa, at any rate it received there a mortal
blow and the Council of Constance consummated it." Protestants,
faithful to the consequences of their principles, applaud this
council unreservedly, for they see in it "the first step to the
deliverance of the world", and greet it as the dawn of the
Reformation (Gregorovius). Perhaps it is wise to say with
Bellarmine that this assembly is a general council which is
neither approved nor disapproved. On account of its illegalities
and inconsistencies it cannot be quoted as an ecumenical
council. And yet it would be unfair to brand it as a
conventicle, to compare it with the "robber council" of Ephesus,
the pseudo-council of Basle, or the Jansenist council of
Pistoia. This synod is not a pretentious, rebellious, and
sacrilegious coterie. The number of the fathers, their quality,
authority, intelligence and their zealous and generous
intentions, the almost unanimous accord with which they came to
their decisions, the royal support they met with, remove every
suspicion of intrigue or cabal. It resembles no other council,
and has a place by itself in the history of the Church, as
unlawful in the manner in which it was convoked, unpractical in
its choice of means, not indisputable in its results, and having
no claim to represent the Universal Church. It is the original
source of all the ecclesiastico-historical events that took
place from 1409 to 1414, and opens the way for the Council of
Constance.
D'Achery, Spicilegium, I (Paris, 1723), 853, see names of the
members of the Council, I, 844; D'Ailly in Operibus Gersonii,
ed. Ellies Dupin (1706); St. Antoninus, Summa Historialis, III,
xxii, c. v. ?2; Bellarmine, De concil., I (Paris, 1608), vii,
13; Bess, Johannes Gerson und die kirchenpolitischen Parteien
Frankenreichs vor dem Konzil zu Pisa (Marburg, 1890);
Bleimetzrieder, Das general Konzil im grossen abendlaendischen
Schisma (Paderborn, 1904); Bouix, De Papa, I, 497; Chronicon S.
Dionysii, IV, 32, 216-38; Gerson, Opera Omnia, ed Ellies Dupin,
II (1706), 123 sqq.,Hardouin, Concilia, VIII, 85; Hefele,
Histoire des Conciles, Leclercq, X, 255; Mansi, Collectio
Conciliarum, XXVI, 1090-1240, XXVII, 114-308; MartEne and
Durand, Amplissima Collectio, VII;, 894; Idem, Thesaurus, II,
1374-1476; Muzzarelli, De auctor. Rom. pontifis, II, 414; Niem,
De Schismate, ed. Erler, III (Leipzig, 1890), 26-40, 262 sqq.;
Pastor, Histoire des Papes, I, 200-3; Salembier, Le grand
schisme d'Occident (Paris, 1900), 251-74, tr. Mitchell (London,
1907); Idem, Petrus ab Alliaco (Lille, 1886), 76 sqq.;
Tiraboschi, Storia litt. ital., II, 370; Tschackert, Peter von
Ailii (Gotha, 1877), see especially Appendix, p. 29; Valois, La
France et le grand Schisme d'Occident, IV, 75 sqq.; WeizsAecker,
Deutsche Reichstagsakten, VI, 496 sqq.; Bleimetzrieder,
Literarische Polemik zu Beginn des grossen abendlandischen
Schismas; Ungedruckte texte und Untersuchungen (Vienna and
Leipzig, 1909); Die kirchenrechtlichen Schriften Peters von
Luna, tr. Erhle in Archiv fuer Literatur und Kirchengeschichte,
VII (1900), 387, 514; Schmitz, Zur Geschichte des Conzils von
Pisa in Roem.Quartalschr. (1895).
L. SALEMBIER
Piscataway Indians
Piscataway Indians
A tribe of Algonquian linguistic stock formerly occupying the
peninsula of lower Maryland between the Potomac River and
Chesapeake Bay and northward to the Patapsco, including the
present District of Columbia, and notable as being the first
tribe whose Christianization was attempted under English
auspices.
The name by which they were commonly known to the Maryland
colonists == Pascatae in the Latin form == was properly that of
their principal village, on Piscataway Creek near its mouth,
within the present Prince Georges county. After their removal to
the north they were known as Conoy, a corruption of their
Iriquois name. There seems to be no good ground for the
assertion of Smith (1608) that they were subject to the Powhatan
tribes of Virginia. Besides Piscataway, which was a palisaded
village or "fort", they had about thirty other settlements,
among which may be named Yaocomoco, Potopaco (Port Tobacco),
Patuxent, Mattapanient (Mattapony), Mattawoman, and Nacochtank
(Lat. Anacostan, now Anacostia, D.C.). The original relation of
these towns to one another is not very clear, but under the
Maryland Government their chiefs or "kings" all recognized the
chief of Piscataway as their "emperor", and held the succession
subject to the ratification of the colonial "assembly". Their
original population was probably nearly 2500.
The recorded history of the Piscataway begins in 1608, when
Captain John Smith of Virginia sailed up the Potomac and touched
at several of their villages, including Nacochtank, where "the
people did their best to content us". In 1622 the same town was
destroyed by a band of plunderers from Virginia, but afterward
rebuilt. On 25 March, 1634, the Catholic English colony of Lord
Baltimore, including the Jesuit fathers Andrew White and John
Altham, and two lay brothers, landed on St. Clement's
(Blackstone"s) Island and established friendly relations with
the people of Yaocomoco, as well as with the great chief of
Piscataway, as also the chief of Potomac town on the Virginia
side. The first altar was set up in an Indian wigwam. Owing to
the attacks of the powerful Susquehanna at the head of the bay
the people of Yaocomoco were about to remove, apparently to
combine with those of Piscataway, and the English settlers
bargained with them for the abandoned site.
The Jesuits at once set to work to study the language and
customs of the Indians in order to reach them with Christianity.
Father White, superior of the mission, whose valuable "Relatio"
is almost our only monument to the Maryland tribes, composed a
grammar, dictionary, and catechism in the Piscataway dialect, of
which the last, if not the others, was still in existence in
Rome in 1832. Another catechism was compiled later by Father
Roger Rigbie at Patuxent. The Indians generally were
well-disposed to the new teaching, and, other Jesuits having
arrived, missions were established at St. Mary's (Yaocomoco),
Mattapony, Kent Island, and, in 1639, by Father White, at the
tribal capital Piscataway, which, from the name of the tapac or
great chief, Kittamaquund, "Big Beaver", was sometimes known as
Kittamaquindi. Here on 5 July, 1640, in presence of the governor
and several of the colonial officers who attended for the
purpose, Father White, with public ceremony, baptized and gave
Christian names to the great chief, his wife, and daughter, and
to the chief councillor and his son, afterward uniting the chief
and his wife in Christian marriage. A year later the
missionaries were invited to Nacochtank, and in 1642 Father
White baptized the chief and several others of the Potomac
tribe.
About this time the renewed inroads of the Susquehanna compelled
the removal of the mission from Piscataway to Potopaco, where
the woman chief and over 130 others were Christians. The work
prospered until 1644, when Claiborne with the help of the
Puritan refugees who had been accorded a safe shelter in the
Catholic colony, seized the government, deposed the governor,
and sent the missionaries as prisoners to England. They returned
in 1648 and again took up the work, which was again interrupted
by the confusion of the civil war in England until the
establishment of the Cromwellian government in 1652 outlawed
Catholicism in its own colony and brought the Piscataway mission
to an end.
Under the new Government the Piscataway rapidly declined. Driven
from their best lands by legal and illegal means, demoralized by
liquor dealers, hunted by slave-catchers, wasted by smallpox,
constantly raided by the powerful Susquehanna while forbidded
the possession of guns for their own defence, their plantations
destroyed by the cattle and hogs of the settlers and their pride
broken by oppressive restrictions, they sank to the condition of
helpless dependents whose numbers constantly diminished. In 1666
they addressed a pathetic petition to the assembly: "We can flee
no further. Let us know where to live, and how to be secured for
the future from the hogs and cattle". As a result reservations
were soon afterward established for each of twelve villages then
occupied by them. Encroachments still continued, however, and
the conquest of the Susquehanna by the Iroquois in 1675 only
brought down upon the Piscataway a more cruel and persistent
enemy. In 1680 nearly all the people of one town were massacred
by the Iroquois, who sent word to the assembly that they
intended to exterminate the whole tribe. Peace was finally
arranged in 1685. In 1692 each principal town was put under a
nominal yearly tribute of a bow and two arrows, their chiefs to
be chosen and to hold at the pleasure of the assembly. At last,
in 1697, the "emperor" and principal chiefs, with nearly the
entire tribe excepting apparently those on the Chaptico river
reservation, abandoned their homes and fled into the backwoods
of Virginia. At this time they seemed to have numbered under
four hundred and this small remnant was in 1704 still further
reduced by a wasting epidemic. Refusing all offers to return,
they opened negotiations with the Iroquois for a settlement
under their protection, and, permission being given, they began
a slow migration northward, stopping for long periods at various
points along the Susquehanna until in 1765 we find them living
with other remnant tribes at or near Chenango (now Binghamton,
New York) and numbering only about 120 souls. Thence they
drifted west with the Delawares and made their last appearance
in history at a council at Detroit in 1793. Those who remained
in Maryland are represented to-day by a few negro mongrels who
claim the name.
In habit and ceremony the Piscataway probably closely resembled
the kindred Powhatan Indians of Virginia as described by Smith
and Strachey, but except for Father White's valuable, though
brief, "Relatio" we have almost no record on the subject. Their
houses, probably communal, were oval wigwams of poles covered
with mats or bark, and with the fire-hole in the centre and the
smoke-hole in the roof above. The principal men had bed
platforms, but the common people slept upon skins upon the
ground. Their women made pottery and baskets, while the men made
dug-out canoes and carried the bows and arrows. They cultivated
corn, pumpkins, and a species of tobacco. The ordinary dress
consisted simply of a breech-cloth for the men and a short
deerskin apron for the women, while children went entirely
naked. They painted their faces with bright colours in various
patterns. They had descent in the female line, believed in good
and bad spirits, and paid special reverence to corn and fire.
Father White gives a meagre account of a ceremony which he
witnessed at Patuxent. They seem to have been of kindly and
rather unwarlike disposition, and physically were dark, very
tall, muscular, and well proportioned.
Archives of Maryland (29 vols., Baltimore, 1883-1900);
Bozman, History of Maryland (2 vols., Baltimore, 1837); Brinton,
The Lenape and their Legends (Walam Olum) (Philadelphia, 1884);
Hughes History of the Society of Jesus in North America I,
1580-1615 (Cleveland, 1907); Mooney and Others, Aborigines of
the District of Columbia and the Lower Potomac in American
Anthropologist, II (Washington, 1889); New York Colonial
Documents (15 vols., Albany, 1843-87), s. v. Conoy; Piscataway,
etc.; Shea, Catholic Indian Missions (New York, 1854); Smith,
General History of Virginia (London, 1629; Richmond, 1819), ed.
Arber (Birmingham, 1884); White, Relatio Itineris in
Marylandiam, Maryland Historical Society Fund pub. no 7
(Baltimore, 1874).
JAMES MOONEY
Piscina
Piscina
(Lat. from piscis, a fish, fish-pond, pool or basin, called also
sacrarium, thalassicon, or fenestella)
The name was used to denote a baptismal font or the cistern into
which the water flowed from the head of the person baptized; or
an excavation, some two or three feet deep and about one foot
wide, covered with a stone slab, to receive the water from the
washing of the priest's hands, the water used for washing the
palls, purifiers, and corporals, the bread crumbs, cotton, etc.
used after sacred unctions, and for the ashes of sacred things
no longer fit for use. It was constructed near the altar, at the
south wall of the sanctuary, in the sacristy, or some other
suitable place. It is found also in the form of a small column
or niche of stone or metal.
ROCK, Church of Our Fathers, IV (London, 1904), 194; BINTERIM,
Denkwuerdigkeiten, IV, 1, 112: Theol. prakt. Quartalschrift
(1876), 33.
FRANCIS MERSHMAN.
Charles Constantine Pise
Charles Constantine Pise
Priest, poet, and prose writer, b. at Annapolis, Maryland, 22
Nov., 1801; d. at Brooklyn, New York, 26 May, 1866. He was
educated at Georgetown College, and was for some time a member
of the Society of Jesus. He taught rhetoric at Mount St. Mary's
College, Emmitsburg, Md., where John Hughes, afterwards
Archbishop of New York, was among his pupils. In 1825 he was
ordained to the priesthood and officiated for some time at the
cathedral in Baltimore. He afterwards served at St. Patrick's
Church, Washington, as assistant pastor, and while there was
elected (11 Dec., 1832) chaplain to the United States Senate --
the only Catholic priest hitherto appointed to that office. He
was a personal friend of President Tyler. In 1848 he became a
pastor of St. Peter's church, New York; he had previously been
assistant pastor in the same church under the vicar-general, Dr.
Powers. In 1849 he was appointed pastor of St. Charles
Borromeo's, Brooklyn where he officiated until his death. Dr.
Pise wrote several works in prose and verse, among them being:
"A History of the Catholic Church (5 vols., 1829); "Father
Rowland" (1829); "Alethia, or Letters on the Truth of Catholic
Doctrines" (1845); "St. Ignatius and His First Companions"
(1845); "Christianity and the Church" (1850). His "Clara", a
poem of the fifteenth century, and "Montezuma", a drama, were
never published. He contributed to the magazine literature of
the day, was a distinguished lecturer and preacher, and a writer
of Latin verse.
SHEA, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, IV
(New York, 1892).
HENRY A. BRANN
Pisidia
Pisidia
A country in the southwestern part of Asia Minor, between the
high Phrygian tableland and the maritime plain of Pamphilia.
This district, formed by the lofty ridges of the western Taurus
range, was in pre-Christian times the abode of stalwart,
half-civilized, and unruly tribes, never entirely subdued.
Ancient writers describe them as a restless, plunder-loving
population. St. Paul, no doubt, had in mind Pisidia, which he
had traversed twice (Acts, xiii, 13-14: note here that,
according to the more probable text, in the latter verse we
should read "Pisidian Antioch"; xiv, 20-23), perhaps three times
(Acts, xvi, 6), when in II Cor., xi, 26, he mentions the "perils
of waters" and "perils of robbers" he had confronted.
Independent until 36 b.c., the Pisidians were then conquered by
the Galatian king, Amyntas, and soon after, together with their
conquerors, forced to acknowledge Roman suzerainty. Joined first
to one province, then to another, it received a governor of its
own in 297 a.d. The principal cities were Cremna, Adada (the
modern name of which, Kara Bavlo, preserves the memory of St.
Paul), Serge, Termessos, Pednalissos, Sagalassos. Heaps of
imposing ruins are all that is now left.
CONYBEARE AND HOWSON, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul (London,
1875); FOUARD, Saint Paul and His Missions, tr. GRIFFITH (New
York, 1894); RAMSAY, Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London,
1890); IDEM, The Church in the Roman Empire (London, 1894);
IDEM, Inscriptions en langue Pisidienne in Revue des Universites
du Midi (1895), 353-60; KIEPERT, Manuel de geographic ancienne
(French tr., Paris, 1887); LANCKORONSKI, Staedte Pamphyliens und
Pisidiens (Vienna, 1892).
CHARLES L. SOUVAY.
Synod of Pistoia
Synod of Pistoia
Held 18 to 28 September, 1786, by Scipio de' Ricci, Bishop of
Pistoia and Prato. It marks the most daring effort ever made to
secure for Jansenism and allied errors a foothold in Italy.
Peter Leopold, created Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1763, emulated
the example of his brother, Emperor Joseph II, in assuming to
control religious affairs in the domain. Imbued with Regalism
and Jansenism he extended a misguided zeal for reform to
minutest details of discipline and worship. In two instructions
of 2 August, 1785, and 26 January, 1786, he sent to each of the
bishops of Tuscany a series of fifty-seven "points of view of
His Royal Highness" on doctrinal, disciplinary, and liturgical
matters, directing that diocesan synods be held every two years
to enforce reform in the Church and "to restore to the bishops
their native rights abusively usurped by the Roman Court". Of
the eighteen Tuscan bishops but three convoked the synod; and of
these his only partisan was Scipio de' Ricci in whom he found a
kindred spirit. Born in 1714 of an eminent family, de' Ricci
gave early promise of worth and eminence. Made Bishop of Pistoia
and Prato, the most populous of the Tuscan dioceses, 19 June,
1780, he planned and energetically pursued, with the
encouragement of Pius VI, the work of much-needed reform, but
influenced by the times, his zeal came to be marked by reckless
audacity. He condemned devotion to the Sacred Heart, discouraged
the use of relics and images, undervalued indulgences,
improvised liturgy, and founded a press for Jansenistic
propaganda. On 31 July, 1786, de' Ricci, in convoking the synod,
invoked the authority of Pius VI who had previously recommended
a synod as the normal means of diocesan reform. With
characteristic energy and prevision he prepared for the council
by inviting from without his diocese, theologians and canonists
notorious for Gallican and Jansenistic tendencies, and issued to
his clergy pronouncements which reflected the dominant errors of
the times. On 18 September, 1786, the synod was opened in the
church of St. Leopold in Pistoia and continued through seven
sessions until 28 September. De' Ricci presided, and at his
right sat the royal commissioner, Guiseppe Paribeni, professor
at the University of Pisa, and a regalist. The promoter was
Pietro Tamburini, professor at the University of Pavia,
conspicuous for his learning and for Jansenistic sympathies. At
the opening session 234 members were present; but at the fifth
session 246 attended, of whom 180 were pastors, 13 canons, 12
chaplains, 28 simple priests of the secular clergy, and 13
regulars. Of these many, including even the promoter, were
extra-diocesans irregularly intruded by de' Ricci because of
their sympathy with his designs. Several Pistorian priests were
not invited while the clergy of Prato, where feeling against the
bishop was particularly strong, was all but ignored.
The points proposed by the grand duke and the innovations of the
bishop were discussed with warmth and no little acerbity. The
Regalists pressed their audacity to heretical extremes, and
evoked protests from the papal adherents. Though these
objections led to some modifications, the propositions of
Leopold were substantially accepted, the four Gallican Articles
of the Assembly of the French Clergy of 1682 were adopted, and
the reform programme of de' Ricci carried out virtually in its
entirety. The theological opinions were strongly Jansenistic.
Among the vagaries proposed were: the right of civil authority
to create matrimonial impediments; the reduction of all
religious ourders to one body with a common habit and no
perpetual vows; a vernacular liturgy with but one altar in a
church etc. Two hundred and thirty-three members signed the acts
in the final session of 28 September, when the synod adjourned
intending to reconvene in the following April and September. In
February, 1787, the first edition (thirty-five hundred copies)
of the Acts and Decrees appeared, bearing the royal imprimatur.
De' Ricci, wishing the Holy See to believe that the work was
approved by his clergy, summoned his priests to pastoral retreat
in April with a view to obtaining their signatures to an
acceptance of the synod. Only twenty- seven attended, and of
these twenty refused to sign. Leopold meantime summoned all the
Tuscan bishops to meet at Florence, 22 April, 1787, to pave the
way for acceptance of the Pistorian decrees at a provincial
council; but the assembled bishops vigorously opposed his
project and after nineteen stormy sessions he dismissed the
assembly and abandoned hope of the council. De' Ricci became
discredited, and, after Leopold's accession to the imperial
throne in 1790, was compelled to resign his see. Pius VI
commissioned four bishops, assisted by theologians of the
secular clergy, to examine the Pistorian enactments, and deputed
a congregation of cardinals and bishops to pass judgment on
them. They condemned the synod and stigmatized eighty-five of
its propositions as erroneous and dangerous. Pius VI on 28
August, 1794, dealt the death-blow to the influence of the synod
and of Jansenism in Italy in his Bull "Auctorem Fidei".
Atti e Decreti del Concilio Diocesano di Pistoja (2nd ed.,
Florence, 1788); tr. Schwarzel, Acta Congregationis
Archiepiscoporum et Episcoporum Etruriae, Florentiae anno 1l787
celebratus (7 vols., Bamberg, 1790-94); Denzinger-Bannwart,
Enchiridion (Freiburg, 1908), 397-422; Ballerini, Opus Morale, I
(Prato, 1898), li-lxxxii; Gerodulo, Lettera critologica sopra il
sinodo di Pistoia (Barletta, 1789); La voce della greggia di
Pistoja e Prato al suo pastore Mgr Vescovo Scipione de' Ricci
(Sondrio, 1789); Lettera ad un Prelato Romano dove con gran
vivezza e con profunda dottrina vengono confutati gli errori de'
quali abbonda il Sinodo di Mgr de' Ricci, Vescovo di Pistoja
(Halle, 1789); Seconda lettera ad un Prelato Romano sull' idea
falsa, scismatica, erronea, contradittoria, ridicola della
chiesa formata del Sinado di Pistoja (Halle, 1790);
Considerazioni sul nuovo Sinodo di Pistoja e Prato fatte da un
paroco della stessa diocesi (Pistoia, 1790); Picot, Memoires
pour servir `a l'histoire du 18 ^e siecle (Paris, 1855), V, 251
sq.; VI, 407 sq.; Gendry, Pie VI, sa vie-son pontificat, II
(Paris, 1907), 451-83, documented from Vatican archives;
Scaduto, Stato e Chiesa sotto Leopold I (Florence, 1885); de
Potter, Vie et Memoires de Scipion de' Ricci (Paris, 1827), 1
sq.; Parsons, Studies in Church History, IV (New York, 1897),
592-600; Scipio de' Ricci in Dublin Review (March, 1852), XXXII,
48- 69.
JOHN B. PETERSON
Pistoia and Prato
Diocese of Pistoia and Prato
(PISTORIENSIS ET PRATENSIS)
Located in the Province of Florence. The city of Pistoia is
situated at the foot of the Apennines in the valley of the
Ombrone. The chief industries of the town are the manufacture of
paper and objects in straw. The cathedral dates from the fifth
century, but was damaged by fire several times prior to the
thirteenth century, when Nicolo Pisano designed its present
form; the outer walls are inlaid with bands of black and white
marble; the tribune was painted by Passignano and by Sorri; the
paintings by Alessio d'Andrea and by Buonaccorso di Cino (1347),
which were in the centre aisle, have disappeared. Other things
to be admired, are the ancient pulpit, the cenotaphs of Cino da
Pistoia and Cardinal Forteguerri, by Verrocchio, the altar of S.
Atto, with its silver work, the baptismal font by Ferrucci, and
the equipments of the sacristy. Opposite the cathedral is S.
Giovanni Rotondo, the former baptistery; it is an octagonal
structure, the work of Andrea Pisano (1333-59), with decorations
by Cellino di Nese; the font itself is a square base with four
wells, surmounted by a statue of St. John the Baptist by Andrea
Vacc`a. The church of S. Giovanni Fuoricivitas is surrounded, on
the upper part, by two rows of arches; it is a work of the
twelfth century; within, there is the pulpit, with its
sculptures by Fra Gulielmo d'Agnello, and the holy-water font,
representing the theological virtues, by Giovanni Pisano. The
name of Pistoia appears for the first time in history in
connexion with the conspiracy of Catiline (62 b.c.), but it was
only after the sixth century that it became important; it was
governed, first, by its bishops, later by stewards of the
Marquis of Tuscany. It was the first to establish its
independence, after the death of Countess Matilda, and its
municipal statutes are the most ancient of their kind in Italy.
It was a Ghibelline town, and had subjugated several cities and
castles; but, after the death of Frederick II, the Florentines
compelled it to become Guelph. About 1300, the Houses of the
Cancellieri (Guelphs), and Panciatichi (Ghibellines), struggled
with each other for supremacy. The former having triumphed it
soon divided into Bianchi and Neri, which made it easy for
Castruccio Castracane to subject the town to his domination, in
1328. Florence assisted the Pistoians to drive Castruccio from
their town, but that aid soon weighed upon them, and they
revolted (1343), taking part with Pisa. In 1351 Pistoia became
definitively subject to Florence. Clement IX was a Pistoian.
PRATO is also a city in the Province of Florence, situated in
the fertile valley of the Bisenzio, which supports many
industries, among them flour mills, woolen and silk
manufactories, quarries, iron, and copper works. The Cicognani
college of Prato is famous. The cathedral, which was erected
before the tenth century, was restored in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, according to plans of Giovanni Pisano; it
contains paintings by Fra Filippo Lippi and by Gaddi, a pulpit
that is a masterpiece of Donatello, and the mausoleums of Carlo
de'Medici and of Vincenzo Danti. In the chapel of la Cintola
there is preserved a girdle that, according to the legend, was
given by Our Lady to St. Thomas. Pinto is first mentioned in
history, in 1007, as being in rebellion against Florence; after
that it had several wars with Florence and Pistoia. In 1350, it
was bought by the Florentines, to prevent it from falling into
the hands of the Visconti. In 1512, it was sacked by the
Spaniards. Fra Arlotto, author of the first Biblical
concordance, was a native of Prato, as were also Fra Bartolommeo
della Porta and several personages of the Inghirami family.
Pistoin claims to have received the Gospel from St. Romulus, the
first Bishop of Fiesole. The first mention of a Bishop of
Pistoia is in 492, though the name of this prelate, like that of
another Bishop of Pistoia, referred to in 516, is unknown. The
first historically known bishop is Joannes (700); Leo (1067),
important in the schism of Henry IV; Jacobus (1118-41); the
Blessed Atto (1135-53); Bonus (1189), author of "De
cohabitatione clericorum et mulierum"; the Ven. Giovanni Vivenzi
(1370); Matteo Diamanti (1400); Donato de'Medici (1436) Nicolo
Pandolfini (1475), who later became a cardinal; three Pucci,
Cardinal Lorenzo (1516), Cardinal Antonio (1519) and Roberto
(1541); Alessandro de'Medici (1573) became Leo XI. In 1653,
Prato was made a diocese, and united, oeque principaliter, with
Pistoia; as early as 1409, Florence asked for the creation of a
diocese at Pinto, on account of the dissensions of the
collegiate church of Pinto with the Bishops of Pistoia; and in
1460, it had been made a prelatura nullius, and given, as a
rule, to some cardinal, in commendam. Other bishops of these
sees were the Ven. Gerardo Gerardi (1679-90), under whom Prato
founded its seminary; Leone Strozza (1690), Abbot of
Vallombrosa, founded the seminary of Pistoia, enlarged by
Michele C. Visdomini (1702); Scipione Ricci (1780), famous on
account of the Synod of Pistoia which he convened in 1786, and
which Pius VI afterwards condemned. The diocese is a suffragan
of Florence; has 194 parishes, with 200,100 inhabitants, 5
religious houses of men, and 19 of women, and 7 educational
establishments for girls.
CAPPELLETTI, Le Chiesa d'Italia, XVII; ROSATI, Memorie per
servire alla storia des vescovi di Pistoia.
U. BENIGNI.
Johann Pistorius
Johann Pistorius
A controversialist and historian, born at Nidda in Hesse, 14
February, 1546; died at Freiburg, 18 July, 1608. He is sometimes
called Niddanus from the name of his birthplace. His father was
a well-known Protestant minister, Johann Pistorius the Elder
(died 1583 at Nidda), who from 1541 was superintendent or chief
minister of Nidda, and took part in several religious
disputations between Catholics and Protestants. Pistorius the
Younger studied theology, law, and medicine at Marburg and
Wittenberg 1559-67. He received the degree of Doctor of
Medicine, and in 1575 was appointed court physician to the
Margrave Karl II of Baden-Durlach, who frequently sought his
advice in political and theological matters. In search of more
consistent beliefs, Pistorius turned from Lutheranism to
Calvinism; through his influence the Margrave Ernst Friedrich of
Baden-Durlach made the same change. As time went on, however,
Pistorius became dissatisfied with Calvinism also. In 1584 he
became a privy councillor of Margrave James III of
Baden-Hochberg at Emmendingen; after further investigation he
entered the Catholic Church in 1588. At his request the Margrave
James brought about the religious disputations of Baden, 1589,
and Emmendingen, 1590. After the second disputation the court
preacher Zehender and the margrave himself became Catholics.
James III, however, died on 17 August, 1590, and being succeeded
by his Protestant brother Ernst Friedrich, Pistorius was obliged
to leave. He went to Freiburg, became a priest in 1591, then
vicar-general of Constance until 1594; after this he was an
imperial councillor, cathedral provost of Breslau, Apostolic
prothonotary, and in 1601 confessor to the Emperor Rudolph II.
After his death his library came into the possession of the
Jesuits of Molsheim and later was transferred to the theological
seminary at Strasburg.
Pistorius published a detailed account of the conversion of
Margrave James III: "Jakobs Marggrafen zu Baden . . .
christliche, erhebliche und wolfundirte Motifen" (Cologne,
1591). His numerous writings against Protestantism, while
evincing clearness, skill, and thorough knowledge of his
opponents, especially of Luther, are marked by controversial
sharpness and coarseness. The most important are: "Anatomia
Lutheri" (Cologne, 1595-8);"Hochwichtige Merkzeichen des alten
und neuen Glaubens" (Muenster, 1599); "Wegweiser vor alle
verfuehrte Christen" (Muenster, 1599). Pistorius was attacked
violently by the Protestants; e. g., by Huber, Spangenbert,
Mentzer, Horstius, and Christoph Agricola. Replies to the
"Anatomia Lutheri" were written by the Protestant theologians of
Wittenberg and Hesse. Pistorius also busied himself with
cabalistic studies, and published "Artis cabbalisticae, h. e.
reconditae theologiae et philosophiae scriptorum tomus unus"
(Basle, 1587). As court historiographer to the Margrave of
Baden, he investigated the genealogy of the princely house of
Zahringen; he also issued two works on historical sources:
"Polonicae historiae corpus, i. e. Polonicarum rerum latini
veteres et recentiores scriptores quotquot exstant" (Basle,
1582), and "Rerum Germanicarum veteres jam primum publicati
scriptores aliquot insignes medii aevi ad Carolum V" (Frankfort,
1583-1607).
RAeSS, Die Convertiten seit der Reformation (Freiburg, 1866),
II, 488-507; III, 91 sqq.; GASS in Allgem. deut. Biog., XXVI,
199-201; HURTER, Nomenclator, III (Innsbruck, 1907); JANSSEN,
Hist. of the German People at the close of the Middle Ages, X
(tr. CHRISTIE, London, 1906), 116-48; SCHMIDLIN, Johann
Pistorius als Propst im Elsass in Hist. Jahrbuch, XXIX (1908),
790-804; [ZELL], Markgraf Jakob III. von Baden in Hist-pol.
Blaetter, XXXVIII (1856); VON WEECH, Zur Gesch. des Markgrafen
Jacob III. von Baden und Hachberg in Zeitsch. fuer Gesch. des
Oberrheins, new series, VII (1892), 656-700; VIII (1893), 710;
XII (1897), 266-72.
FRIEDRICH LAUCHERT.
Pithou, Pierre
Pierre Pithou
A writer, born at Troyes, 1 Nov. 1539; died at Nogent-sur-Seine,
1 Nov., 1596. His father, a distinguished lawyer, had secretly
embraced Calvinism. Pierre studied the classics in Paris under
Turnebe, and afterwards with his brother, Franc,ois Pithou,
attended lectures in law at Bourges and Valence under Cujas, who
often said: Pithoei fratres, clarissima lumina. In 1560 he was
admitted to practise at the Paris bar; but on the outbreak of
the second war of religion, he withdrew to Troyes. Not being
admitted to the bar at Troyes on account of his Calvinist
belief, he withdrew to Sedan which was a Protestant district,
and, at the request of the Duc de Bouillon, he codified the
legal customs into the form of laws. He then proceeded to Basle,
where he published Otto de Freisingen's "Vie de Frederic
Barberousse" and Warnfrid's" Historia Miscellanea". After the
Edict of Pacification of 1570 he returned to France, escaped
during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and, in 1573, joined the
Catholic Church. In the struggles between the future Henry IV
and the League. he was an ardent adherent of Henry; he
collaborated in the production of the "Satire Menippee", and
being skilled in canon law, made a study, in an anonymous letter
published in 1593, of the right of the French bishops to absolve
Henry IV without consulting the pope. In 1594 he published an
epoch-making work "Les libertes de l'eglise gallicane". For the
first time the maxims of Gallicanism were really codified, in
eighty-three articles, The first edition was dedicated to Henry
IV. The permission to publish the edition of 1651 under Louis
XIV contains these words: "We wish to show our favour to a work
of so great importance for the rights of our crown". Pithou's
book was the basis of the Four Articles of 1682. D'Aguesseau
declared that the book was "the palladium of France", President
Henault, that "the maxims of Pithou have in a sense the force of
laws". An edict of 1719, and a decree of the Parliament of
Dauphine on 21 April, 1768, ordered the enforcement of certain
articles in Pithou's book, as if these eighty-three articles
were legal enactments. They were reprinted by Dupin in 1824.
Henry IV appointed Pithou procurator general of the Parliament
of Paris; but he soon resigned the post, preferring to return to
his juristic and literary studies. He edited Salvian,
Quintilian, Petronius, Phaedrus, the Capitularies of
Charlemagne, and the "Corpus juris canonici". His brother
Franc,ois (1541-1621), who became a Catholic in 1578, wrote in
1587 a treatise on "The greatness of the rights, and of the
preeminence of the kings and the kingdom of France", and was
distinguished for his fanatical hostility to the Jesuits. Pierre
Pithou, more equitable, saved the Jesuits from some of the
dangers that threatened them for a short time after the
attempted assassination of Henry IV by Chatel.
GROSLEY, Vie de Pierre Pithou (Paris, 1756); DUPIN, Libertes de
l'Eglise gallicane (Paris, 1824), preface.
GEORGES GOYAU.
Joseph Pitoni
Joseph Pitoni
A musician, born at Rieti, Perugia, Italy, 18 March, 1657; died
at Rome, 1 Feb., 1743, and buried in the church of San Marco,
where he had been choirmaster, in the Pitoni family vault. His
biography, by his pupil Girolamo Chiti, is in the library of the
Corsini palace. At five years he began to study music at Rome.
Not yet sixteen, he composed pieces which were sung in the
church of the Holy Apostles. At that age he was in charge of the
choir at Monte Rotondo; at seventeen at the Cathedral of Assisi.
At twenty (1677) he returned to Rome, and was maestro di
cappella in many churches; in 1708 he was appointed director of
St. John Lateran. In 1719 he became choirmaster of St. Peter's,
and remained in that office for twenty-four years. In the
Accademia di S. Cecilia he was one of the four esaminatori dei
maestri. Pitoni acquired such a marvellous facility, that for
his compositions, which were of great musical value, he could
write every part separately, without making a score. The number
of his compositions, says Chiti, is infinite. Many of them are
written for three and four choirs. He also began a Mass for
twelve choirs; but his advanced age did not allow him to finish
it. He left a work "Notizie dei maestri di Cappella si di Roma
che oltramontani".
Dictionary of Music from 1450-1880 (London, 1880); EITNER,
Quellenlexicon, VII (1902), 462-64; BAINI, Memorie . . . di G.
P. da Palestrina, II (Rome, 1828), 55, nota 502, Ger. tr.
KANDLER (Vienna, 1834).
A. WALTER.
Jean-Baptiste-Francois Pitra
Jean-Baptiste-Franc,ois Pitra
Cardinal, famous archaeologist and theologian, b. 1 August,
1812, at Champforgeuil in the Department of Saone-et-Loire,
France; d. 9 Feb., 1889, in Rome. He was educated at Autun,
ordained priest on 13 December, 1836, and occupied the chair of
rhetoric at the petit seminaire of Autun from 1836 to 1841.
>From his early youth he manifested indefatigable diligence
which, combined with brilliant talents and a remarkable memory,
made him one of the most learned men of his time. The first
fruit of his scholarship was his decipherment, in 1839, of the
fragments of a sepulchral monument, discovered in the cemetery
of Saint-Pierre at Autun and known as the "Inscription of
Autun". It probably dates back to the third century, was
composed by a certain Pectorius and placed over the grave of his
parents. The initials of the first five verses of the
eleven-line inscription form the symbolical word ichthus (fish),
and the whole inscription is a splendid testimony of the early
belief in baptism, the Holy Eucharist, prayer for the dead,
communion of saints, and life everlasting. He published the
inscription in "Spicilegium Solesmense" (III, 554-64).
In 1840 Pitra applied to Abbot Gueranger of Solesmes for
admission into the Benedictine order but, to accommodate the
Bishop of Autun, he remained another year as professor at the
petit seminaire of Autun. He finally began his novitiate at
Solesmes on 15 January, 1842, and made his profession on 10
February, 1843. A month later, he was appointed prior of
St-Germain in Paris. During his sojourn there he was one of the
chief collaborators of Abbe Migne in the latter's colossal
"Cursus patrologiae". Pitra drew up the list of the authors
whose writings were to find a place in the work, and
collaborated in the edition of the Greek writers up to Photius,
and of the Latin up to Innocent III. At the same time he
contributed extensively to the newly founded periodical
"Auxiliare catholique". In 1845 he had to break his connexion
with the great work of Migne, owing to the financial
difficulties of the priory of St-Germain, which finally had to
be sold to satisfy the creditors. Pitra undertook a journey
through Champagne, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace, Switzerland,
Belgium, Holland, and England in the interests of his priory. At
the same time he visited numerous libraries in these countries
in search of unpublished manuscripts bearing on the history of
the early Christian Church. The fruits of his researches he gave
to the world in his famous "Spicilegium Solesmense" (see below).
His many great archaeological discoveries and his unusual
acquaintances with whatever bore any relation to the Byzantine
Church, induced Pius IX to send him on a scientific mission to
the libraries of Russia in 1858. Before setting out on his
journey he studied the manuscripts relative to Greek canon law,
in the libraries of Rome and other Italian cities. In Russia,
where he spent over seven months (July, 1859- March, 1860), he
had free access to all the libraries of St. Petersburg and
Moscow. On his return he made an official visit of the twenty
Basilian monasteries of Galicia at the instance of the papal
nuncio at Vienna. After arranging his writings at the
monasteries of Solesmes and Liguge, he was called to Rome in
August, 1861, to consult with the pope on the advisability of
erecting at the Propaganda a special department for Oriental
affairs and to make a personal report on his findings in the
libraries of Russia. Pitra was also chosen to supervise the new
edition of the liturgical books of the Greek Rite, which was
being prepared by the Propaganda. He was created cardinal on 16
March, 1863, with the titular church of St. Thomas in Parione.
As his residence he chose the palace of San Callisto where he
continued to live the simple life of a monk as far as his new
duties permitted.
On 23 Jan., 1869, he was appointed librarian of the Vatican. He
drew up new and more liberal regulations for the use of the
library and facilitated in every way access of scholars to the
Vatican manuscripts. Above all, however, he himself made
diligent researches among the manuscripts and published many
rare and valuable specimens in his "Analecta" (see below). At
the Vatican Council in 1870, he ably maintained against the
inopportunists that the Catholics of the Greek and Oriental
Churches upheld the papal infallibility. After the accession of
Leo XIII (20 Feb., 1878) he supervised the edition of a
catalogue of the Vatican manuscripts, of which the first volume,
"Codices Palatini Graeci", appeared in 1885 and was prefaced by
Cardinal Pitra with a laudatory epistle addressed to Leo XIII.
On 21 May, 1879, he was appointed Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati
and for five years laboured incessantly for the welfare of his
diocese, which had been greatly neglected. On 24 Merch, 1884, he
was transferred to the episcopal See of Porto and Santa Rufina
to which was annexed the dignity of subdean of the Sacred
College. On 19 May, 1885, Abbe Brouwers published in the
"Amstelbode", a Catholic journal of Belgium, a letter of Pitra,
which the hostile press construed into an attack upon the policy
of Leo XIII; but Pitra soon satisfied the Holy See of his filial
devotion.
Cardinal Pitra was one of the most learned and pious members of
the Sacred College. Besides being Librarian of the Holy Roman
Church and member of various Roman congregations and
cardinalitial commissions, he was cardinal protector of the
Cistercians, the Benedictine congregation of France, the
Benedictine nuns of St. Cecilia at Solesmes and of Stanbrook in
England, the Eudists, the Brothers of Christian Schools, the
Sisters of Mercy of St. Charles in Nancy, and the Sisters of the
Atonement in Paris. The following are his literary
productions:-(1) "Histoire de Saint Leger, eveque d'Autun et
martyr, et de l'eglise des Francs au VII ^e siecle" (Paris,
1846), one of the most complete monographs on the Church of the
Franks during the seventh century; (2) "La Hollande catholique"
(Paris, 1850), consisting mostly of letters concerning Holland
and its people, which he wrote while travelling in that country
in 1849; (3) "Etudes sur la collection des Actes des Saints par
les RR. PP. Jesuites Bollandistes" (Paris, 1850), a complete
history of the "Acta Sanctorum" of the Bollandists, preceded by
a treatise on the hagiological collections up to the time of
Rosweyde (d. 1629); (4) "Spicilegium Solesmense" (4 vols.,
Paris, 1852-1858), a collection of hitherto unpublished works of
Greek and Latin Fathers of Church and other early ecclesiastical
writers; (5) "Vie du P. Libermann" (Paris, 1855; 2nd ed., 1872;
3rd ed., 1882), a very reliable life of the Venerable Paul
Libermann, founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of
Mary. Libermann had been a personal acquaintance of Pitra; (6)
"Juris ecclesiastici Graecorum historia et monumenta" (2 vols.,
Rome, 1864-8), containing the canonical writings of the Greeks
from the so-called "Apostolic Constitutions" to the "Nomocanon",
generally ascribed to Photius. With its learned introduction and
its many notes and comments, the work forms a complete history
of Byzantine law; (7) "Hymnographie de l'eglise grecque" (Rome,
1867), a dissertation on Greek hymnography, accompanied by
numerous Greek hymns in honour of Sts. Peter and Paul; (8)
"Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmense". The first volume (Paris,
1876) contains Greek hymns; the second (Frascati, 1883), the
third (Venice, 1883), and the fourth (Paris, 1883) contain
writings of ante-Nicene Fathers; the fifth (Paris, 1888) is
composed of writings of the Fathers and of a few pagan
philosophers; the seventh (Paris, 1891) contains writings
bearing on the canon law of the Greeks and was published
posthumously by Battandier, who had been Pitra's secretary; the
eighth (Monte Cassino, 1881) contains the writings of St.
Hildegard; the sixth, which was to contain Greek melodies, has
not been published; (9) "Analecta novissima" (2 vols., Frascati,
1885-8), a second supplement to "Spicilegium Solesmense". The
first volume contains a French treatise on papal letters,
bullaria, catalogues of popes etc., and a hitherto unpublished
treatise on Pope Vigilius by Dom Constant. The second volume is
devoted to writings of Odon d'Ourscamp, Odon de Chateauroux,
Jacques de Vitry, and Bertrand de la Tour, four medieval French
bishops of Frascati; (10) "Sancti Romani cantica sacra" (Rome,
1888), a collection of hymns written by Romanos, the greatest
Byzantine hymnodist. Pitra presented this work to Leo XIII on
the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee. In addition to these
works Pitra contributed numerous archaelogical, theological,
historical, and other articles to various scientific periodicals
of France.
Cabrol, Histoire du Cardinal Pitra, benedictin de la
Congregation de France (Paris, 1893), tr. into German by BUehler
in Studien und Mitteilungen aus dem Benediktiner- und
Cistercienser-Orden, XXVII-XXX (Bruenn, 1907-9); Battandier, Le
cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pitra, eveque de Porto, bibliothecaire de
la Sainte Eglise romaine (Paris, 1896); Cabrol, Le Cardinal
Pitra. Ses travaux et ses decouvertes in Science catholique
(1889), tr. in The Lamp (1899); Bibliographie des Benedictines
de la Congregation de France (Paris, 1906), 120-31.
MICHAEL OTT
Pitts, John
John Pitts
Born at Alton, Hampshire, 1560; died at Liverdun, Lorraine, 17
Oct., 1616. He was educated at Winchester and New College,
Oxford, where he remained, 20 March, 1578-1580. He was admitted
to the English College, Rome, 18 Oct., 1581, ordained priest 2
March, 1588, became professor of rhetoric and Greek at the
English College, Reims, proceeded M.A. and B.D. at
Pont-`a-Musson, Lic.D. at Treves (1592), and D.D. at Ingolstadt
(1595). After holding a canonry at Verdun for two years he was
appointed confessor and almoner to the Duchess of Cleves, and
held this position for twelve years. After her death his former
pupil, the Bishop of Toul, appointed him dean of Liverdun. His
chief work is the "Relationum Historicarum de rebus Angliae", of
which only one part, "De Illustribus Angliae Scriptoribus", was
published (Paris, 1619). The other sections, "De Regibus
Angliae", "De Episcopis Angliae", and "De Viris Apostolicis
Angliae", remained in Manuscript at Liverdun. The "De
Scriptoribus" is chiefly valuable for the notices of
contemporary writers. On other points it must be used with
caution, being largely compiled from the uncritical work of
Bale. Pitts also published "Tractatus de legibus" (Trier, 1592);
"Tractatus de beatitudine' (Ingolstadt, 1595); and "Libri septem
de peregrinatione" (Dusseldorf, 1604).
KIRBY, Annals of Winchester College (London, 1892); FOSTER,
Alumni Oxonienses (Oxford, 1891); WOOD, Athenoe Oxonienses
(London, 1813-20); DODD, Church History, II (Brussels, 1739);
KNOX, Douay Diaries (London, 1878); FOLEY, Records Eng. Prov. S.
J., III, VI; GILLOW, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath., s. v.
EDWIN BURTON.
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
DIOCESE OF PITTSBURG/PITTSBURGH (PITTSBURGENSIS).
Suffragan of Philadelphia, in the United States of America. It
comprises the counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler,
Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland
in the State of Pennsylvania, an area of 7238 square miles, the
total population of which is 1,944,942 (U.S. Census, 1910).
About 24.42 per cent of these are Catholics.
It is probable that the first religious services held by white
men within the limits of what is now the Diocese of Pittsburg
were conducted by a Jesuit, Father Bonnecamp, who accompanied
Celeron in his exploration along the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers
in 1749. The strategic character of the ground where the
Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio pointed
this place out to George Washington as a spot of future
importance. He first saw "the Forks", as the place was called by
the Indians, on 24 November, 1753, when engaged in bearing a
letter from Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia,
to the commander of the French forces, asserting the British
claims to the territory of Western Pennsylvania. Both England
and France regarded the Forks as a valuable military position,
opening a way for exploration to the west and south, and each
was determined to occupy it. At the time the adjacent country
was occupied by various Indian tribes -- the Shawnees,
Delawares, Senecas -- dwelling along the Allegheny, Monongahela,
and Ohio Rivers. The first place of public worship within this
territory was a chapel erected by the French in the stockade of
Fort Duquesne, after Captain Contrecoeur and his forces had
driven Ensigns Ward and Frazier from the Fort they were
constructing at the fork of the Ohio. This chapel was built at
some time later than 16 April, 1754, and dedicated under the
title of "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin of the Beautiful
River". In those days and for long afterwards, the Ohio -- on
account of its clear water and rugged scenery -- was known as
the "beautiful river".
There is preserved in the archives of the city of Montreal a
register of baptisms and deaths kept by the army chaplain at
Fort Duquesne, from which we learn that the first interment in
the cemetery of the fort was that of Toussaint Boyer, who died
20 June, 1754. The first white child born on the site of the
city of Pittsburg was John Daniel Norment. His godfather was the
chief officer of Fort Duquesne, John Daniel Sieur Dumas. These
entries are signed by "Friar Denys Baron, Recollect Priest,
Chaplain". If written evidence alone were to be considered,
Father Baron, and not Father Bonnecamp (mentioned above), must
be regarded as the first priest to offer the Holy Sacrifice, and
the first white man to perform any public act of religious
worship in the territory of the diocese. The register of
baptisms and interments which took place at Fort Duquesne begins
11 July, 1753, and ends 10 October, 1756. The records before
June, 1754, are from posts occupied by the French in the
north-western part of Pennsylvania, now in the Diocese of Erie,
before they took possession of the spot on which Fort Duquesne
stood. In the register we find entries made by Friar Gabriel
Amheuser and Friar Luke Collet, but they were chaplains from
other French forts. Friar Denys Baron alone signs himself
"Chaplain" of Fort Duquesne. These records testify to the
baptism and burial of a number of Indians, showing that the
French chaplains did not neglect their missionary duties.
The French evacuated the fort, the British army under General
Forbes took possession in 1758, and the place was named
Pittsburg, or Fort Pitt, after William Pitt, Prime Minister of
England. For thirty or forty years the Catholic religion was
almost, if not entirely, without adherents in Western
Pennsylvania. Gradually, as the western part of the state was
settled, the Catholics gained a foothold, but met with much
opposition in this strongly Calvinistic section. In 1784 their
number had increased sufficiently about Pittsburg to warrant
them in sending Felix Hughes to the Very Rev. John Carroll, at
Baltimore, who was then superior of the clergy in the United
States, asking that a priest be sent to minister to them at
least once or twice a year. By this time there were seventy-five
or eighty families along the Chartiers Creek, up the Monongahela
Valley, and about Pittsburg. Priests were few in the country
then, and the request could not be complied with. Under such
conditions some of the Catholics in Western Pennsylvania had
become indifferent, abandoned their religion altogether, or
neglected their religious duties, even when the priests came. It
is probable that the first priest to pass through Western
Pennsylvania and minister to the Catholics there was a
Carmelite, Father Paul, who came in 1785. Another was the Rev.
Charles Whalen, a Capuchin, who remained a short time in 1787.
In 1792 the Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget, afterwards Bishop of
Bardstown, remained here for some weeks. In 1793 the Revs. Baden
and Barrieres came to Pittsburg and remained from September
until November. The Rev. Michael Fournier was here fourteen
weeks in the winter of 1796-7.
The site on which St. Vincent's Archabbey now stands, in Unity
township, Westmoreland county, was the first place where a
permanent Catholic settlement was made in Western Pennsylvania.
This was about 1787. The Rev. Theodore Bowers purchased the
tract of land then known as "Sportsman's Hall" in 1790, and
became the first priest of the little colony. When the Rev.
Peter Heilbron came to take charge of the parish, in November,
1799, he found seventy-five communicants. In March, 1789, ground
was purchased at Greensburg, where the Rev. John B. Causse said
Mass for the first time in June, 1789. A log chapel was begun in
1790, but was never completed. The Rev. Patrick Lonergan went
with a colony of Catholics from Sportsman's Hall in 1798 and,
after a short stay at West Alexander, began a church at
Waynesburg, Greene County, in 1799, or 1800, "which", says
Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore, writing in 1862, "was completed
by me thirty years later". In the summer of 1799, the Rev.
Demetrius A. Gallitzin came to reside with a colony of Catholics
at Maguire's Settlement, now known as Loretto, in Cambria
County, in the present Diocese of Altoona, and his mission-field
included much of what is now the Diocese of Pittsburg. These,
with the churches at Sugar Creek, Armstrong County, where the
Rev. Lawrence F. Phelan took up his residence in 1805, and at
Pittsburg, where the Rev. William F. X. O'Brien settled in 1808,
were the first centres of the Faith in Western Pennsylvania. The
Franciscans, who had reared the first altar at Fort Duquesne,
furnished the first missionaries to attempt permanent centres of
Catholic life, and establish places of worship in Western
Pennsylvania. The Revs. Theodore Browers, John B. Causse,
Patrick Lonergan, Peter Heilbron, Charles B. Maguire, all
belonged to one or another branch of the Order of St. Francis.
The Rev. William F. X. O'Brien, the first resident pastor of
Pittsburg, was ordained at Baltimore 11 June, 1808, came to
Pittsburg in November of the same year, and took up the erection
of the church which is known in history as "Old St. Patrick's".
It stood at the corner of Liberty and Epiphany streets, at the
head of Eleventh Street, in front of the present Union Station.
The Right Rev. Michael Egan dedicated this church in August,
1811, and its dedication and the administration of the Sacrament
of Confirmation mark the first visit of a bishop to this part of
the state. After twelve years of labour and exposure on the
missions of his extensive territory, in which there were perhaps
not more than 1800 souls, Father O'Brien's health declined, and
in March, 1820, he retired to Maryland, where he died 1
November, 1832. He was succeeded in May, 1820, by the Rev.
Charles B. Maguire, who had been pastor of the church at
Sportsman's Hall since 1817. "Priest Maguire", as he was called
by the Protestant people of Pittsburg, was a man of great
ability and extensive learning, and in his day one of the best
known and most respected and influential citizens of the
community. He gave to the parish of St. Patrick, and to the
Church in Western Pennsylvania something of his own strong
personality and splendid qualities of order, progress, industry,
love, and fidelity to Jesus Christ -- influences that are still
felt. He began in 1827 the erection of St. Paul's church, which,
when finished and dedicated 4 May, 1834, was the largest and
most imposing church edifice in the United States. The Poor
Clare Nuns opened a convent and academy in 1828 on Nunnery Hill
in what was then Allegheny (now the North Side of Pittsburg).
The community left Nunnery Hill in 1835 and, after remaining in
another part of Allegheny until 1837, the sisters either
returned to Europe, or entered other religious communities in
the United States.
Father Maguire died of cholera 17 July, 1833, and was succeeded
as pastor by his assistant, the Rev. John O'Reilly, who
completed St. Paul's church, introduced the Sisters of Charity
from Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1835, and established in the same
year a Catholic school, and in 1838 an orphan asylum which the
Sisters of Charity conducted until they were withdrawn from the
diocese by their superiors in 1845. In April, 1837, Father
O'Reilly was transferred to Philadelphia, and the Rev. Thomas
Heyden, of Bedford, took his place. In November of the same
year, Father Heyden returned to Bedford, and the Rev. P. R.
Kenrick, the late Archbishop of St. Louis, became pastor of St.
Paul's, Pittsburg. In the summer of 1838, Father O'Reilly
exchanged places with Father Kenrick, and returned to Pittsburg.
He remained at St. Paul's until succeeded by the Rev. Michael
O'Connor, 17 June, 1841. He then went to Rome, entered the
Congregation of the Mission, and died at St. Louis, Missouri, 4
March, 1862. The first religious community of men was
established in Pittsburg, 8 April, 1839, which date marks the
advent of the Fathers of the Congregation of Our Most Holy
Redeemer, in the person of the Rev. Father Prost, who came to
take charge of St. Patrick's parish, and established St.
Philomena's.
Bishop Flaget appears to have been the first to regard Pittsburg
as the future see of a bishop, having entertained this idea in
1825. As early as 1835 Bishop Kenrick proposed to the cardinal
prefect of Propaganda a division of the Diocese of Philadelphia
by the erection at Pittsburg of an episcopal see, and he
recommended the appointment of the Rev. John Hughes as Bishop
either of Philadelphia or of Pittsburg. The suggestion of Bishop
Kenrick was officially approved in Rome, and in January, 1836,
the Rev. John Hughes was named Bishop of Philadelphia, and
Bishop Kenrick was transferred to Pittsburg. Some obstacle
intervened, and the appointments were recalled. The matter was
again discussed in the Third Provincial Council of Baltimore, 16
April, 1837, but no definite action was taken. In the Fifth
Provincial Council, which assembled at Baltimore, 14 May, 1843,
the division of the State of Pennsylvania into two dioceses was
recommended to the Holy See, and the Rev. Dr. Michael O'Connor
was named as the most suitable person to govern the new see.
Both actions of the council were confirmed at Rome. The new
Diocese of Pittsburg, according to the Bull of erection, issued
11 August, 1843, was "Western Pennsylvania". This designation
being rather vague, Bishop Kenrick, of Philadelphia, and Bishop
O'Connor agreed to consider the Diocese of Pittsburg as
comprising the Counties of Bedford, Huntingdon, Clearfield,
McKean, and Potter, and all west of them in the state of
Pennsylvania. This agreement was afterwards confirmed by a
rescript of the Holy See. The new diocese contained an area of
21,300 sq. miles, or a little less than one-half of the state,
and not more than one-third either of the entire, or of the
Catholic population. Dr. Michael O'Connor was in Rome at the
time of the division of the Diocese of Philadelphia, and his
appointment to the new see was announced to him by Gregory XVI,
while the future bishop knelt at his feet to ask permission to
enter the Society of Jesus. "You shall be bishop first, and a
Jesuit afterwards", said the venerable pontiff. These prophetic
words were literally fulfilled. The Bull of his appointment was
dated 11 August, 1843, and he was consecrated four days later by
Cardinal Franzoni in the church of S. Agata, at Rome, on the
feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, the titular feast
of the first chapel at Fort Duquesne.
Michael O'Connor was born near the city of Cork, Ireland, 27
September, 1810. His early education was received at Queenstown,
in his native country. At the age of fourteen he went to France,
where he studied for several years. Then he was sent by the
Bishop of Cloyne and Ross to the College of the Propaganda, at
Rome where he won the title of Doctor of Divinity. Cardinal
Wiseman, then Rector of the English College at Rome, in his
"Recollections of the Last Four Popes", speaks in terms of high
commendation of the ability of the youthful O'Connor, and of the
manner in which he won his doctor's cap and ring. On 1 June,
1833, he was ordained, and immediately afterwards was appointed
professor of Sacred Scripture at the Propaganda. The post of
vice-rector of the Irish College was next assigned to him, and,
returning to his native land, he was stationed for a time in the
parish of Fermoy. At the invitation of Bishop Kenrick he came to
the United States in 1839, and was at once appointed to a
professorship in St. Charles Borromeo's Seminary, Philadelphia,
afterwards becoming its president. During his connexion with the
seminary, he attended the mission at Morristown, and built the
church of St. Francis Xavier at Fairmount. In June, 1841, he was
appointed vicar-general of the western part of the State of
Pennsylvania, and came to Pittsburg to succeed the Rev. John
O'Reilly, as pastor of St. Paul's. The event is chronicled in
his notebook as follows: "June 17, 1841, arrived at Pittsburg on
this day (Thursday); lodging at Mrs. Timmons, at $4.00 per
week". One month after his arrival, Father O'Connor undertook
the erection of a parochial school, organized a literary society
for young men of the city, and opened a reading-room. He was
consecrated Bishop of Pittsburg 15 August, 1843, at Rome. Soon
after his consecration he left Rome and passed through Ireland
on his way to America, with a view of providing priests and
religious for his diocese. He called at Maynooth in October,
1843, and made an appeal to the students, asking some of them to
volunteer their services for the new Diocese of Pittsburg. Five
students whose course of studies was almost completed and three
others also far advanced resolved to accompany the bishop.
Coming to Dublin, he obtained a colony of seven Sisters of the
recently-founded Order of Our Lady of Mercy to take charge of
the parochial schools and of the higher education of young
ladies. These were the first Sisters of the Order of Mercy,
founded by Mother Catherine McCauley, to establish a convent in
the United States. He sailed for America 12 November, and
arrived at Pittsburg in December, 1843. At that time the bishop
had in his vast diocese 33 churches, a few of which were
unfinished, 16 priests, and a Catholic population of less than
25,000 souls.
The following were the churches and priests of Western
Pennsylvania at the time of the erection of the Diocese of
Pittsburg. In Allegheny County: Pittsburg, St. Paul's Cathedral,
the Very Rev. M. O'Connor and his assistant, the Rev. Joseph F.
Deane; St. Patrick's, the Rev. E. F. Garland; St. Philomena's
(German), the Revs. John N. Neuman, Julius P. Saenderl, F. X.
Tschenheus, Peter Czackert, C.SS.R. The Rev. A. P. Gibbs resided
in Pittsburg and attended a number of small congregations and
missions in Allegheny and other counties: St. Philip's,
Broadhead (now Crafton); St. Mary's, Pine Creek; St. Alphonsus,
Wexford; St. Peter's, McKeesport. Westmoreland County: St.
Vincent's; Mt. Carmel (near Derry), the Rev. Jas. A. Stillinger.
Indiana County: Blairsville, Sts. Simon and Jude, and St.
Patrick's, Cameron's Bottom; the Rev. Jas. A. Stillinger, from
St. Vincent's. Butler County: Butler, St. Peter's, the Rev. H.
P. Gallagher; Donegal, St. Joseph's (now North Oakland);
Murrinsville, St. Alphonsus; St. Mary's (now Herman), the Rev.
H. P. Gallagher (residing at Butler). Armstrong County: St.
Patrick's, Sugar Creek; St. Mary's, Freeport; the Rev. Joseph
Cody, residing at Sugar Creek. Washington County: St. James,
West Alexander. Fayette County: St. Peter's, Brownsville (in
course of erection), the Rev. M. Gallagher. Greene County:
Waynesburg, St. Ann's; other stations in Greene County,
Washington County, and Fayette County, attended by the Rev. M.
Gallagher, from Brownsville. Beaver County: Beaver, Sts. Peter
and Paul. Bedford County: Bedford, St. Thomas, the Rev. Thomas
Heyden. Somerset County: Harman Bottom, St. John's, the Rev.
Thomas Heyden (residing at Bedford). Huntingdon County:
Huntingdon, Holy Trinity, attended from Newry by the Rev. James
Bradley. Blair County: Newry, St. Patrick's; St. Luke's, Sinking
Valley and St. Mary's, Hollidaysburg, attended from Newry by the
Rev. James Bradley. Cambria County: Loretto, St. Michael's;
Jefferson (now Wilmore), St. Bartholomew's; Johnstown, St. John
Gaulbert; Ebensburg, St. Patrick's (now Holy Name of Jesus);
Hart's Sleeping Place, St. Joseph's; Summit, St. Aloysius's
(these places attended in 1843 by the Rev. Peter H. Lemke,
pastor of Loretto, and his assistant, the Rev. Matthew W.
Gibson). Mercer County: Mercer, St. Raphael's, attended from
Butler by the Rev. H. P. Gallagher. Clearfield County:
Clearfield, St. Francis; French Settlement, St. Mary's; Grampian
Hills, St. Bonaventure. Crawford County: Cupewago (dedication
unknown); French Settlement, St. Hippolyte's; Oil Creek, St.
Stephen's. Erie County: Erie, St. Patrick's; Erie, St. Mary's.
Elk County: Elk Creek (dedication unknown); Marysville
(dedication unknown). Clarion County: Erismans, St. Michael's;
Red Bank, St. Nicholas's. The Rev. J. A. Berti seems to have
attended the missions of Clearfield, Crawford, Erie, Elk, and
Clarion Counties in 1843.
As yet there were but two religious communities in the diocese,
the Redemptorist Fathers at St. Philomena's church, and the
Sisters of Charity, who had charge of St. Paul's Orphan Asylum,
and two schools in Pittsburg. The first parochial school
building at St. Paul's, which has already been mentioned, was
opened 14 April, 1844. On 16 June of the same year the first
diocesan synod was held, and statutes were enacted for the
government of the Church. On the 30th of the same month a chapel
was opened for the use of the coloured Catholics of the city. In
the same year the publication of "The Catholic" was begun, and
the paper has been regularly issued every week down to the
present time. St. Michael's ecclesiastical seminary, for the
education of candidates for the priesthood, was established also
in 1844. Thus in the brief space of a single year Bishop
O'Connor had succeeded in thoroughly organizing all the
departments of his vast diocese. The Presentation Brothers came
in 1845 to take charge of St. Paul's Boys' School. They withdrew
from the diocese, however, in 1848. In 1846 Bishop O'Connor
received the Benedictine Order into the diocese. Their abbey was
founded at St. Vincent's, Beatty, Pa., by the late Archabbot
Boniface Wimmer (then the Rev. Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.) from the
Benedictine monastery of Melten, in Bavaria, and in its college
and seminary many young men have received their higher education
and completed their studies for the priesthood.